From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up–After driving while drunk, crashing his truck into a tree, and wrecking his knee, Ted York no longer has a basketball scholarship to NYU or much of a future. He attends Alcoholics Anonymous on a judge's orders and has been sober for 90 days. When a stranger offers him full tuition if he'll keep an eye on a bulimic freshman for her billionaire father, the teen accepts the deal, expecting it to require little effort. But he hadn't counted on falling in love with Erica, and he finds himself forced to decide whether his loyalty is to her or the man paying his bills. Coburn skillfully balances the issues of alcoholism and bulimia with the fragile love story of two lost teens. Ted and Erica are surprisingly mature and aware of their faults, and their dialogue, including obscenities, is realistic. Erica's father is sympathetic in his genuine but misdirected concern for his daughter. The fast-paced narrative is helped along by frequent e-mails between characters. Part Ellen Wittlinger's Heart on My Sleeve (S & S, 2004), part Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now (Random, 2004), LoveSick will keep readers rooting for these teens.–Jane Cronkhite, Cuyahoga County Public Library, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Gr.^B 9-12. The author of Prep (2003) offers an oddly touching love story about two addicts trying to survive their freshman year of college. Ted is a blue-collar alcoholic jock who lost his scholarship after destroying his knee in a drunk-driving accident. Erica is a foul-mouthed, bulimic Park Avenue princess whose wealthy father will do anything to cure her eating disorder. Through slick middleman Michael (whose breezy, cheesy e-mails provide comic relief), Erica's father bribes Ted into spying on Erica's eating habits by offering to replace his scholarship. When the two discover each other's secret addictions and fall in love, Ted tells Erica the truth, setting off a chain of events that ends in both violence and redemption. Although there's a Gossip Girl element to the writing, Coburn manages to imbue Ted and his spoiled-rich-kid characters with a surprising humanity. The dialogue is gritty and realistic, and Coburn's writing skill is evident in his almost sensual descriptions of Erica's bingeing rituals. Jennifer Hubert
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Dangerous, devastating, and funny as all hell, LoveSick is a must read for anyone who has ever found themselves recovering. -- Koren Zailckas, Bestselling author of Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood
In LoveSick, Jake Coburn puts a modern twist on the classic love story. I savored every last morsel. -- Amy Gray, author of Spygirl: True Adventures from My Life as a Private Eye
About the Author
Jake Coburn lives in Los Angeles, California.
