Charlie's Song by Joy Lynn Goddard

Title: Charlie's Song
Author: Joy Lynn Goddard
Publisher: Chestnut Publishing
Publication Date: 2007
Number of Pages: 219

Charlie is a would-be singing star whose mixed up family keeps standing in her way. She’s embarrassed by her younger brother, Nicholas, who’s a little "slow," and fed up by her mother who runs off to the casino every chance she gets. Her friend Matt is there to help, and she can count on her friend Shannon too. Or can she?

Somehow her crazy life gets spread across the internet.

Charlie doesn’t want to show her face at school again, but that would mean losing her spot in Teen Idol, the school’s singing competition. Alessa would love that. After all, she plans on winning the competition and would stop at nothing to defeat Charlie.

Suddenly Charlie finds herself in grave danger with more to lose than Teen Idol... She could lose her life!

One of the things that I like best about Joy Lynn Goddard that I don't find in many other authors is that she writes about real life situations that happen every day. Fires, kidnappings, stalkers, cyber-bullying . . . basically anything and everything that you read about in the newspaper. She takes these pieces of reality and weaves them into a wonderful story that A) not only tells us how to get us out of fire alive but also B) entertains us and warns us about these dangers.

"Charlie's Song" is a real page turner that I'm sure anyone can relate to. Unlike, Joy Lynn Goddard's first book - "Daredevils" - the characters felt a lot more real. I also like how she made a series connecting each book by characters, not actions and events. Does that make sense?

However, I noticed that Joy Lynn Goddard tried to incorporate some of our generations' sayings and expressions. That would make sense since this is a YA novel, but Joy seemed to either use expressions that were quite out of date or she used them in the wrong place at the wrong time. But besides that I found this novel very enjoyable and I thought the way she wrote the ending was very unique (in a good way!) and different.

I am giving this book an A-.