Kiss My Book by Jamie Michaels

All of Ruby Crane’s dreams are coming true. At just fifteen, she has sold her first novel, and has as a result traded her mousy brown locks for blown-out platinum waves, caught the romantic attention of sexy upperclassman and suggestively named Jordan Lush, and squashed the ego of every mean girl in her Manhattan high school who ever shot her a glare. Ruby is on top of the world—until she isn’t. All it takes is one reporter to whisper the word every writer fears: plagiarism, and Ruby is hightailing it up north to lick her wounds and mourn the loss of Jordan with her eccentric New Age aunt in the tiny town of Whispering Oaks. Ruby swears she will never WRITE or READ another word ever again. She even goes so far as to change her name and chop off her hair. But she discovers its’ not that easy turning her back on her lifelong passion for books, especially after crush-worthy local boy Jacob turns out to be a classics-spouting hottie who can utter lines from Shakespeare and Chaucer at the drop of a hat. Ruby’s summer-in-hiding turns out to be a book-worthy adventure, including investigating a hundred year old romantic ghost story and organizing a protest to keep open a local bookstore. But through it all, the question remains: DID Ruby plagiarise her novel? And if she did, will she ever have the courage to face up to what she’s done and accept the consequences? Clearly based in part on the plagiarism controversy surrounding real-life seventeen year old author Kaavya Viswanathan’s first novel, Kiss My Book is a delicious little paperback original with a chewy moral center that teens can gnaw on long after they finish the story. Michaels is clearly in love with literature, which comes through loud and clear with Ruby’s many mentions of her fav titles. So if you like books about books, then you need Kiss My Book!