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Informationen zum Autor C.M. Surrisi is the author of the Agatha Award nominated middle grade Quinnie Boyd Mysteries series and is also the author of the Junior Library Guild Selection picture book The Best Mother , illustrated by Diane Goode. She is a former lawyer and holds an MFA from VCFA. She is a member of the Author’s Guild, Mystery Writers of America, The National League of American Pen Women, and a past president of the Minnesota chapter of Sisters in Crime. Klappentext The intensity of tween fandom collides with the shifting friendship dynamics of middle school as Iris comes to terms with all the ways friendships can be good and bad. Now available in paperback! Pop star Lola Bay is everything to Iris and her best friend, Leeza. Her songs speak right to their souls and they can’t wait to start a Lola Bay fan club when middle school starts. But then mean girls take over the fan club and Leeza seems to be interested in other things. Enter Dana. She’s bold and cool and not afraid to stand up for herself. Plus, she’s a massive Lola Bay fan and knows how to get free merch online. She even has big ideas for getting them to a concert. When some of Dana’s ideas make Iris a little nervous, she pushes the feelings down—Dana seems to know what she’s doing. Only as Dana’s plans get bigger and bigger, Iris feels worse and worse. And then Dana crosses a line that causes trouble for Iris’s whole family. How could someone who is supposed to be a friend do that? And, Iris wonders, how did I let things go this far? Leseprobe 1 Best Friends In Life and Lola Bay This was our most awesome summer. Every day, Leeza and I packed peanut butter and blueberry jam sandwiches and hung out at the Richfield pool. Some older girls, like Melanie Fisher and her imitators, teased us because we didn’t have two-piece bathing suits, but we didn’t care. Like the day Melanie said to me, “Iris, that suit and your wet hair make you look like a third grader. I thought you’d want to know.” And Leeza grabbed my arm and said so Melanie could hear, “Ignore her, Iris. At least we swim at the swimming pool.” We just didn’t let them spoil our fun. Leeza and I grew up across the street from each other and were total buddies from day one. We played in her sandbox together, hid from her little brothers and sisters in her basement, went to camp and Scouts, and played softball. I liked Scouts and beading bracelets. She liked playing softball and canoeing. Me not so much. But we both loved the pool. My mom dropped us off, and her mom picked us up, and if we were really lucky, her mom would take us to the bead store or to a movie. One hot June afternoon, Leeza’s mom took us to see the movie Don’t You Dare . That’s when we first saw Lola Bay acting. We’d heard her on KDQB while we were at the pool, and we loved her songs, but since she’d won a Grammy, she was popping up everywhere. Lola Bay played the part of a girl from a farm who ran away to the city and had to find ways to stay safe. It wasn’t easy. She strummed guitar and sang on street corners so people would put dollars in a can by her feet. It was scary. If she hadn’t met a really honest social worker lady at a shelter, it could have gone way bad. We fell in love with her and started watching her online. In her videos she wore a V-neck black T-shirt and super-baggy jeans and had lots of bracelets and rings. Her long hair was pulled up in a messy knot. She wrapped her arms around a big fat acoustic guitar. She sang like Dua Lipa. And she wrote her own songs too, like Billie Eilish. And she growled at the best parts of the song, a little like Lizzo. Everything else stopped mattering. Lola Bay became our favorite singer—our summer obsession. We sang her songs over and over. We planned to start a fan club when school started, and decorated membership cards. “And I’m gone ,”...
