Sweet

by Emmy Laybourne

Overview

The luxurious celebrity cruise launching the trendy new diet sweetener Solu should be the vacation of a lifetime. But Laurel is starting to regret accepting her friend Viv's invitation. She's already completely embarrassed herself in front of celebrity host Tom Forelli—the hottest guy ever!—and she's too sick to even try the sweetener. And that's before Viv and all the other passengers start acting really strange.
Tom knows that he should be grateful for this job and the chance to shed his former-child-star image. His publicists have even set up a 'romance' with a sexy reality star. But as things on the ship start to get wild, he finds himself drawn to a different girl. And when the hosting gig turns into an expose on the shocking side effects of Solu, it's Laurel that he's determined to save.
Emmy Laybourne, author of the Monument 14 trilogy, takes readers on a dream vacation in Sweet that goes first comically, then tragically, then horrifyingly, wrong!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250055194
Publisher:	Feiwel & Friends
Publication date:	06/02/2015
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	HL560L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

EMMY LAYBOURNE is the internationally bestselling author of six young adult novels, including Monument 14, Sweet, and Berserker. Her books have been honored by the Junior Library Guild, American Library Association, and the Bank Street Children’s Book Committee, among others, and translated into 9 languages. She studied writing as an undergrad at Vassar College and while getting an MFA at UCLA for screenwriting, she won the Eleanor Perry Award from Women in Film. Emmy is a former character actress, and is occasionally recognized from her role as Mary Katherine Gallagher’s best friend in the movie “Superstar.” She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two kids.

Editorial Reviews

2015-03-11
Celebrities, romance, and carnage on the high seas. It's pretty skeevy for a meet-cute, but when 17-year-old Laurel vomits on 19-year-old Tom's shoes, it's destiny—and foreshadows flavors to come. Laurel's on this luxury weight-loss cruise to keep a friend company; Tom's there as a television host, trying to wrangle his child-star career into something more serious. The ritzy cruise is sponsored by Solu, a sugar substitute and weight-loss catalyst that's supposedly a "solu"-tion for fatness. Tom declines Solu because of his strict "clean eating" diet; Laurel declines from seasickness and wariness. At first, Solu's effects are merely preposterous, causing a 13-pound weight loss in two days. But soon passengers become walking, tooth-dropping cadavers, so addicted—think heroin times meth times vampires—that they're rioting and committing frenzied murder to drink one another's Solu-filled blood. With former competitors from Survivor and The Bachelorette aboard, the who-will-survive plot works well, fast-paced yet farcically cheesy. (Tom can identify someone's "schizoid break" because "I did a guest star on Criminal Minds"; then again, according to Laurel, he's "so frickin' manly.") Tom and Laurel alternate narrating, their first-person voices indistinguishable. The wealthy passengers' superior obliviousness seeps into the text, as when Laybourne calls the multiracial ship crew "a walking United Nations" and a black girl "strong and angry." A glitzy bloodbath with the most ironic title ever. (Horror. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

Simultaneously terrifying, hilarious, and action-packed, SWEET is a wild ride that holds up a warped mirror to our society. I loved it from the first line to the last.” —Marie Lu, New York Times bestselling author of Legend and The Young Elites

“Laybourne's fictional world highlights themes of friendship, the culture of celebrity, and addiction...A finely knit narrative in which romance pairs perfectly (somehow) with societal horror.” —Jennifer Prince, Buncombe County Public Libraries, NC, School Library Journal

“Laybourne's masterful novel opens as a comical potential romance, becomes suspenseful, then horrific, and ends as a gripping action-adventure survival story sure to enthrall readers ... The book is recommended as required summer reading.” —VOYA, Starred Review

“Combining mystery with a bit of romance and a peek into Hollywood's obsession with being thin, Laybourne creates an interesting commentary on society's addiction to weight loss and diets.” —Booklist

“While maintaining an exciting, face-paced, terrifying narrative, Laybourne manages to weave in details that highlight friendship, the culture of celebrity and addiction.” —Asheville Citizen-Times

“Laybourne delivers a candy-coated horror novel that alternates between increasingly violent scenes and Laurel and Tom's poignant romance.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher