We Built This City
by Cat Patrick
Intermediate, Middle School    Paulsen/Penguin    272 pp.
4/24    9780593462164    $17.99
e-book ed.  9780593462171    $10.99

It’s 1985, and twelve-year-old Stevie has spent years performing with Synchronicity—a group whose shows are part lip synch, part dance, and some ASL. This summer, they’re on a (chaperoned) cross-country tour. Offstage, Stevie is shy and anxious. Even though she’s determined to ask out her crush via Long-Distance Dedication on American Top 40 Countdown, she can’t stop tripping over her words when she talks to him in person. She’s also worried about her brother, who has epilepsy and keeps brushing her off. But somewhere along the road from Omaha to New York City and back to Cheyenne, Stevie believes she’ll learn how to be a star. In a road-trip novel that’s chaotic but deeply joyful, Patrick captures the thrills and anxieties of performing onstage—and all the complicated relationships that go on behind the scenes. The prose is at times darkly funny and at others affecting. The protagonist’s reverence for 1980s pop culture also shines through and is convincing even if readers have little familiarity with the era. Though Stevie’s attempts at first romance take center stage, it’s most rewarding to watch her confidence grow as she slowly builds connections with her castmates and realizes that strong friendships can be as vital as first love.

Pubissue-From the March/April 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.