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Tall, blonde, and athletic, AJ Dawson can intimidate even the worst bully. As captain of the basketball team, she drives her fellow teammates beyond endurance to win a game. As a result, none of them include her in their after-school plans. It also doesn’t help that she’s going out with Bob Klinek, a skater and punk, who her friends, Krysta and Sophie, consider a freak. I mean, come on…the kid wears a purple Mohawk spiked high on his head.
AJ has the gift of clairvoyance, and, for several nights, she’s dreamed about her older brother falling from a great height onto a frozen surface. Though her brother is annoying, she can’t let him die. She tries to warn their mother, but her mother refuses to discuss the subject or believe that her daughter can see the future.
Psychic dreams aren’t the only things that AJ has to deal with. The regular coach for her basketball team has been replaced with a coach who prefers to act like a teenager. She basically turns the team into a bunch of losers because she feels that winning isn’t important. And then there’s Bob, who tends to embarrass her more than she’s willing to admit—which, in turn, makes her feel bad because she really likes him. Maybe she can change him in between trying to save her brother.
Don’t Tell Mother brings home the fact that it’s okay to be different and to be comfortable with it—something that AJ has to learn the hard way. Bob may be a little weird, but he’s a good guy, and he doesn’t want to change AJ at all. I laughed myself silly at the shocked reactions of AJ’s parents when she brings Bob home for dinner (can you imagine that purple Mohawk at the table?), but he takes it gracefully, which only made me like him more.
AJ is tough on her basketball team and her friends, but she’s fair. She reminds me of a girl I used to go to school with, whom I liked and admired a great deal. AJ is the kind of teen that everyone can look up to, and I especially liked how she handles an incident with the new coach, which could have been disastrous if she hadn’t stepped in.
Author Tara West once again proves that she can write a funny and heartfelt young adult paranormal read, adding in just enough of AJ’s chilling visions to give the story a thrilling edge. She’s simply one of my favorite young adult e-book authors.
