After one summer at the Little Tykes Theatre, Mia Fullerton is meek no more, but that doesn’t make her life any easier—not in her sophomore year at St. Hilary’s, when her best friend Lisa forces her into a dangerously big part in The Music Man. Not when her ex-boyfriend, Tim, is teaching her little brother Chris to treat women like objects.
And not when she learns to drive—with serious repercussions.
Who is Mia? Is she an independent girl like Zoë, her acerbic goth friend from Little Tykes? She’d like to be—that’s why she’s volunteering to be onstage for the first time, in a show populated by her first ex and childhood crush Jake, her arch-nemesis Cassie, and new girl in town Alyssa. That’s why it’s so important she overcome the bizarre driving instruction of St. Hilary’s janitor Mr. Corrigan to earn her driver’s license, and therefore her freedom.
Or is she the girl who misses Tim, even after the way he betrayed her? Tim is smart, funny, and likeable in a distinctly obnoxious way, and he’s determined to win Mia back—even if he has a funny way of doing so, dating both Cassie and Alyssa at the same time, behind both their backs. Can Mia forgive Tim? Should she instead choose Eric, Zoë’s cousin, a nicer and more respectful choice in every way? Or would either choice defeat her goals of independence?
And when the worst-case scenarios rear their heads—when Mia is forced into the lead in The Music Man, when her first night out on the road goes horribly, when Chris appears headed entirely to the dark side—does Mia on her own have what it takes to set things right?
Between dog costumes and stage costumes, big embarrassments and bigger chickens, bad singing and worse crashes, and everything else that could possibly go wrong, Mia the Magnificent is a hilarious, clever, and endlessly fun novel, and the best installment yet of the Mia Fullerton series.
