What if your ex was famous and adored by millions? What would you do if you had one chance to make him regret his entire existence? How much would you risk?

Kate Hollis's ex-boyfriend's face plasters newsstands and TV, the Internet, and the multiplex. Jake Sharpe is one of the biggest recording stars on the planet, and every song he's famous for is about Kate. For over a decade his soundtrack has chased her — from the gym to the supermarket, from the dentist's office to the bars. Now thirty-year-old Kate gets the call that Jake has finally landed back in their Vermont hometown for an MTV special. The moment she has been waiting for has arrived.

On the eve of their prom, Jake Sharpe vanished, resurfacing when his song Losing — about his and Kate's first sexual experience — shot to the top of the Billboard charts. And the hits kept coming, each more personal than the one before.

Now Kate gets her chance to confront Jake and reclaim her past. But after eleven years of enduring protracted and far-from-private heartbreak, everyone in Kate's life has a stake in how this plays out. Kate must risk betraying the friends Jake abandoned, the bandmates whose songs he plundered, and her own parents, who fear this will dredge up a shared past more painful than any of them want to acknowledge. But after getting the call in the dead of night and jumping on a plane, can she turn back now?

Newsweek dubbed The Nanny Diaries "a national phenomenon" and the New Republic proclaimed, "Thank God for Citizen Girl." Now McLaughlin and Kraus have written a poignant, humorous tale about modern celebrity obsession and coming of age during the divorce boom. With flawless depictions ofthe 1980s, a charismatic heroine, and their signature biting wit, the authors offer up another lively and hilarious tale of a smart young woman looking for satisfaction in the chaos of contemporary culture.

"The team behind The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl returns with another breezy chick lit portrayal of a woman wronged and, eventually, empowered. When Kate Hollis's childhood chum Laura calls from their Vermont hometown and announces the arrival of Jake Sharpe, a mega rock star and Kate's high school sweetheart, Kate jumps on a plane from Charleston, S.C. (where she's a sustainable development consultant) and makes for idyllic Croton Falls. Through it's been 13 years, Kate still has a primal need to confront not only the boy who abandoned her before the senior prom, but the musical pirate who used her personal life as fodder for his most celebrated songs and cheated his high school bandmates out of deserved recognition and royalties. Chapters switch back and forth between the present and the pivotal middle and high school years where Kate (then Katie) and Jake did the first-love thing: readers get to see Jake's growing he's-just-not-that-into-you-ness and how (surprise!) their Zima-fueled love (it was the '90s) was idealized. While one spends much of the book wanting to shout at Kate to give it up, go back to Charleston and get on with it, McLaughlin and Kraus do get the nagging need for closure in even the shallowest relationships comically right." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"'The team behind The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl returns with another breezy chick lit portrayal of a woman wronged and, eventually, empowered. When Kate Hollis's childhood chum Laura calls from their Vermont hometown and announces the arrival of Jake Sharpe, a mega rock star and Kate's high school sweetheart, Kate jumps on a plane from Charleston, S.C. (where she's a sustainable development consultant) and makes for idyllic Croton Falls. Through it's been 13 years, Kate still has a primal need to confront not only the boy who abandoned her before the senior prom, but the musical pirate who used her personal life as fodder for his most celebrated songs and cheated his high school bandmates out of deserved recognition and royalties. Chapters switch back and forth between the present and the pivotal middle and high school years where Kate (then Katie) and Jake did the first-love thing: readers get to see Jake's growing he's-just-not-that-into-you-ness and how (surprise!) their Zima-fueled love (it was the '90s) was idealized. While one spends much of the book wanting to shout at Kate to give it up, go back to Charleston and get on with it, McLaughlin and Kraus do get the nagging need for closure in even the shallowest relationships comically right. (June)' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"This third effort from McLaughlin and Kraus is spot on...a moving story. A bittersweet coming-of-age tale with flashes of wit and an especially sympathetic heroine." Kirkus Reviews

"[J]ust as the novel barrels toward what appears to be the most cliched of endings, the authors pull out a surprise and give the reader, and Kate, a completely unexpected and wholly satisfying conclusion." Booklist

"Alternating between the present showdown and Kate and Jake's junior high and high school years (complete with an exhausting amount of early Nineties trivia), the story is implausible, and Jake never seems worth all the fuss." Library Journal

"It is so awful, so unfunny, so confusing that you'd suspect alien abduction. A more likely reason for the dreadful Dedication is that McLaughlin/Kraus have a limited range, one best suited to satire." USA Today

From the runaway bestselling authors of The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl comes the story of Kate Hollis, a woman who finds herself at the threshold of full adulthood, only to discover that the only way to 30 is through 17.

Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin are the authors of The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl. They live and work in New York City. Please visit their website at www.emmaandnicola.com.