The Baddest Girl on the Planet

In Heather Frese's debut novel, The Baddest Girl on the Planet, a smart-mouthed yet vulnerable heroine comes of age on North Carolina's Outer Banks, and takes on the trial and error of adulthood with funny and moving results.

"No one writes songs about being Good," points out Evie Austin, self-proclaimed "baddest girl on the planet." In this confessional novel, she details every step of her fall into badness, including the time Mike Tyson inadvertently turned her into a fourth-grade social pariah; how she got the nickname "Easy Evie" in high school; and the accidental pregnancy that ended her college career: "Most Likely to Get Knocked Up and Move Back Home might as well have been written in your high school yearbook." A broken childhood home, a few poor decisions and some serious stink-eye from Lady Luck have put Evie on a bumpy road. However, her gallows humor and irrepressible spirit might see her through to the future she deserves--if she can learn to believe she deserves it. 

Told out of chronological order in a mixture of first- and second- person, with the occasional letter to Dear Abby sprinkled in, the frustrations of parenthood, the complexities of family and the dangers of believing labels play out in Frese's breezy, powerful voice. She clearly evokes her North Carolinian setting and imbues her characters with the eccentricity common to Southern fiction without stooping to caricature. Like a letter from a close girlfriend, Evie's story demands big laughs and big love. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

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