Local Girls

June 22, 2015
Zancan's promising debut chronicles the end of a longtime friendship as remembered in flashbacks by 19-year-old Maggie, who's having drinks in a Florida dive bar in the company of two female friends and Sam, a movie star who happens by. After watching the trio trade barbs with some young women from the posh side of town, Sam takes a shine to them: Maggie is ambivalently pregnant, Lindsey is dating someone else's boyfriend, and Nina, despite being sassy and full of personality, is stuck in her mother's house, teaching the odd workout class at the gym. Then in walks Lila, leading Maggie to remember how Lila and Nina were once close friends. Nina and Lila meet as little kids in their working-class neighborhood and begin the sort of intense female friendship that can't be infiltrated by the rest of the clique. It continues even when Lila's dad strikes it rich and Lila recruits another member, Max, an eccentric but charming boy from her new expensive private school, to join their group. Things begin to unravel among Max, Nina, and Lila once Nina begins a prank war, culminating in the undoing of their close-knit unit. Sam's outsider perspective adds an interesting ingredient to this satisfying story. Zancan makes these young women, who are tired of Orlando and one another, into real people, contrasting their rich inner lives with their dead-end town. Agent: Monika Woods, Inkwell Management.

May 15, 2015
In Zancan's debut, three Florida girls experience a life-changing night when they discover a movie star at their favorite local haunt. The Shamrock doesn't see much excitement. In fact, you can pretty much guarantee how a night there will unfold. Nestled in a nowhere town outside of Orlando, it's the go-to place for Maggie, Nina, and Lindsey to test-drive their newfound adulthood. As narrator Maggie paints this picture, she notes that, on the surface, "we look happy." But when A-list movie star Sam Decker arrives in search of a night of drinking away from the spotlight, this illusion of stability begins to unravel. Sam Decker looks happy, too-or should be, based on how he's portrayed in the magazines the girls adore-but we know outright that this fated night is the last of his life. This revelation should allow for a healthy building of suspense, but the book never achieves the full crescendo the setup suggests. Instead, the story turns inward, focusing on how this encounter with Decker brings out each girl's insecurities and the ways in which they diverge and connect. Decker takes the sparkle out of movie-star life, revealing himself as flawed and rather lost; if someone like him can feel so small, where does that leave the rest of them? Zancan describes Florida's oppressive heat so well that it seems to affect the entire narrative; the girls' shared history is revealed in a slow, almost dreamlike fashion. As a narrator, Maggie is distant, weighed down by the responsibility of friendship and years of memories: "We cried about these things alone and together and wrote about them in the journals we had grown too old to call diaries." There's a stickiness to the prose that keeps it from achieving its intended impact. A character study that will draw you in-just don't expect to have any energy left at the end.

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May 15, 2015
Longtime friends Maggie, Nina, and Lindsey are burnouts in a burnout town on the far outskirts of Orlando. With no educational or career opportunities, they spend their summer days working unsatisfying jobs at the mall and obsessing over pop-culture magazines. Then, one night, movie-star Sam Decker walks into their favorite bar while in town for a PR stunt. Shameless flirting turns into a surprisingly honest conversation about Decker's disenchantment with fame and the entertainment industry, while Maggie narrates over the night's progress with the girls' shared history until these simmering frustrations eventually boil over. In her first novel, Zancan expertly fleshes out each of the girls and her relationship within the group. Her prose is phenomenal, matching the rising tension of the girls' history with the sweltering, inescapable Florida weather. However, Decker's plight is the book's biggest weakness, often lacking weight and drawing attention away from the more compelling drama among the trio. A prime example of a character study and the wonderful and horrible things young friends do to each other.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)