AMAZING GRACE
Megan Shull
Hyperion Books for Children
Fiction
ISBN: 0786856904
256 pages

Grace Kincaid has her own line of cosmetics and a successful modeling career thanks to her top billing on the pro-tennis circuit. She also has her own agent, coach, nutritionist, makeup artist, assistant, lawyer, and even her own bodyguard. What she doesn't have --- and what she desperately wants --- is a chance to have a normal life: to live at home with her mother, to attend school regularly, to hang out with friends, and to date.

Grace tells her mother she wants out --- of it all. Very quickly she resigns from the world of professional tennis and from her many lucrative endorsements. She undergoes a drastic makeunder. Her long, blond, carefully-coiffed hair gives way to a dyed-red cropped hairdo. She sheds her designer wardrobe and all the accessories, and tosses out her pink, rhinestone-studded cell phone. Now she sports a tiny ruby on the side of her nose, thanks to the skill of her mom, the surgeon.

She resurfaces on a tiny Alaskan island with her new look and a new name --- Emily O'Brien.

The plan is for Grace to disappear from sight for three months, so the news of her retirement from professional tennis would die down. Now she lives with Ava, a retired FBI agent, in a tiny, rustic cabin with no hot water and an outhouse. For Grace "Ace" Kincaid, who is used to traveling on private jets and living in five-star hotels, this is a drastic change.

During her first trip into town, on Ava's rusty old bike, Emily has a close encounter of the scary kind with a moose and catapults over the bike's handlebars. A young man named Teague rescues her and soon becomes her first boyfriend. Emily enrolls in the local school where she tries to blend in. None of the locals has any clue about Grace's true identity. Emily learns to split wood with an ax named Beverly, heat dishwater, dress in many layers, and drive a snowmobile. She experiences alcohol for the first time with very unpleasant results. And later on she experiences her very first kiss.

Emily attends counseling sessions with the town health care specialist/therapist to help her deal with the many drastic changes in her life. While reading a celebrity magazine in the therapist's waiting room, Grace/Emily is startled to learn that a huge reward is being offered for the first photo of Grace in hiding. This is ominous news since it means the press will eventually, if not sooner, swarm the remote island and expose her. Once again everything abruptly changes in her life.

How author Megan Shull ties up all the loose ends in this interesting and fairly believable story will please the reader.

   --- Reviewed by Carole Turner

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