Lola Carlyle’s 12-Step Romance
Author: Danielle Younge-Ullman
Release Date: May 5, 2015
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Get it here: Amazon│Barnes & Noble│Kobo Books
Lola Carlyle is lonely, out of sorts, and in for a boring summer. So when her best friend, Sydney, calls to rave about her stay at a posh Malibu rehab and reveals that the love of Lola’s life, Wade Miller, is being admitted, she knows what she has to do. Never mind that her worst addiction is decaf cappuccino; Lola is going to rehab.
Lola arrives at Sunrise Rehab intent solely on finding Wade, saving him from himself, and—naturally—making him fall in love with her…only to discover she’s actually expected to be an addict. And get treatment. And talk about her issues with her parents, and with herself. Plus she has insane roommates, and an irritatingly attractive mentor, Adam, who’s determined to thwart her at every turn.
Oh, and Sydney? She’s gone.
Turns out, once her pride, her defenses, and her best friend are stripped away, Lola realizes she’s actually got a lot to overcome…if she can open her heart long enough to let it happen.
This is definitely a cute and light contemporary read that will make you sigh, giggle, and laugh out loud as you read the antics of Lola Carlyle. Albeit a tad unrealistic with a celebrity child faking her way into rehab (I guess stranger things have happened!), overall it leaves readers with some messages that Lola learned herself throughout the book.
“Maybe I’m crazy, but sometimes you get a gut feeling, a sense of a path opening up in front of you and the certainty that you need to take that path.
I have that sense now, and I see the path.
The path leads to rehab.”
I was thoroughly annoyed with Lola in the beginning of the book. She was pretty selfish, snobbish, and naive. However, as the book goes on, Lola realizes some things she didn’t know about herself. She might have been faking her alcoholism (which is how she got into rehab), but some therapy she went through really helped her in the end. Hey, nothing like a good time in rehab to find some self-discovery, am I right? Towards the end of the novel, my opinion of Lola definitely changed – for the better. She learns, she listens, and she changes into someone that I would have liked to be friends with.
The romance in the book is so sweet and definitely has swoony moments. Although Lola sets out in the beginning of the book to ensnare Wade (some teen celebrity), she starts wondering if it’s Wade she wants, or the Wade that she used to know… Meanwhile, some other guy is more compatible with her in every way. Their build-up from frenemies to grudging respect to something more was done really nicely and I really enjoyed it.
Although the beginning of the book made me a little irritated with Lola’s silly (and dumb) antics, the end made it up by showing a girl who discovers where she is in the scope of her life, and with her friends and family. Looking for a light, amusing, and in the end coming-of-age book that will leave you satisfied? Lola’s 12-Step Romance can fix that.
Danielle Younge-Ullman is a novelist, playwright and freelance writer. She studied English and Theater at McGill University, then returned to her hometown of Toronto to work as professional actor for ten years. Danielle’s short story, Reconciliation, was published in MODERN MORSELS—a McGraw-Hill Anthology for young adults—in 2012, her one-act play, 7 Acts of Intercourse, debuted at Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival in 2005, and her adult novel, FALLING UNDER, was published by Penguin in 2008. Danielle lives in Toronto with her husband and two daughters.
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