Likely Story (Likely Story Series #1)

by David Van Etten

Overview

MALLORY IS A teenage girl living in L.A. and her mother is the oftnominated, never-winning star of a daytime soap; she is, in fact, the ultimate drama queen. After yet another blow-out about her mother’s awful plotlines and overacting, Mallory starts blogging about how she wishes soap operas were more like real kids’ lives instead of the ridiculous storylines the shows usually feature.
When her mother’s agent reads the blog, Mallory ends up in her own whirlwind drama, both at school and on the lot, as she works to protect the integrity of her original idea, cope with her mother’s jealousy, and get her best friend a lead role on the show. Factor in her boyfriend with the girlfriend, the cute but bad brother to said-best-friend, and the super-cute male lead on her show, and Mallory’s got plenty of her own melodrama to cope with.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375849626
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	05/13/2008
Series:	Likely Story Series , #1
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	868 KB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

David Van Etten is actually three writers: Chris Van Etten is currently a fulltime writer for ABC’s One Life to Live; David Ozanich is a freelance writer and playwright; and David Levithan is the author of Boy Meets Boy, and many other young adult novels for Knopf.

Read an Excerpt

My life has been a soap opera since the day I was born.
At the time of my arrival, my mother had been an actress (using that term loosely) on Good As Gold for almost ten years. The writers had worked her pregnancy into the story line, and when Mom started going into labor, the director kept the cameras rolling. Mom swears she didn’t notice, but if you look at the episode, you can see that she’s playing it up, hoping that each contraction will bring her closer to a Daytime Emmy. Luckily, the cameras weren’t allowed in the delivery room. But two weeks later, Mom was back at work, on the twelve-by-twelve set that serves as every single hospital room in the fictional town of Shadow Canyon. (If you watch closely, you’ll see that only the flowers change.) Immaculately made up, with the whole staff of Shadow Canyon General watching on in admiration, my mother gave birth to me for a second time. And I was there waiting, under the sheet between her legs, for Dr. Lance Singletary to reach in, lift me toward the camera, and utter with complete surprise, “It’s a girl, Geneva! It’s a girl!”
This was the first time I ever appeared on TV.
It was also the last.
They wanted to keep me. Mom and I were on the cover of Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly. There was a crew from Entertainment Tonight taping the Good As Gold crew as they taped my second birth. Mom’s fan clubs sent thousands of daisies, homemade cards (many of them addressed to Geneva), and home-knit pairs of socks. A network press release dubbed me “the Future Queen of Soapland” and said I was a “star of tomorrow.” The hype was stupendous, but clearly I didn’t believe my own press. On my second day of taping, I refused to stop crying—big, volcanic wails. The noise was unbearable . . . and, even worse, the way I cried made my face scrunch up. If there’s one thing a soap opera will never, ever tolerate, it’s a scrunched-up, uncute face, even on a sixteen-day-old baby.
A supermodel pair of baby twins was brought in, and I was sent home with a nanny. Four months later, Good As Gold viewers would watch as Geneva’s infant daughter, Diamond, was abducted by Geneva’s escaped-convict ex-lover, a former priest named Rance who had sixteen personalities (ten of whom were battling sex addiction). When Diamond was found six months later by the lone member of Shadow Canyon’s police force, she had miraculously transformed into a breastbudding twelve-year-old starlet–a fact that none of the citizens of Shadow Canyon (not even the clairvoyant ones) ever noticed.
In the past sixteen years, Diamond has been abducted six times, has died once, has fallen in love twice with people who were later revealed to be her relatives, has had three bouts of amnesia, has been in a coma twice, has eloped once, has broken off two engagements, has had her debutante debut ruined once by an earthquake and once by a dead best friend, has twice fallen into the hands of a coven of witches, has been locked in the trunk of a car six times, has pulled a gun on someone fourteen times, has had a gun pulled on her twentytwo times, and has had near-death experiences eight times (twice from drowning, twice in a car crash, once in a plane crash, once after being stabbed by her lover-slash-long loststepbrother, once in childbirth, and once–I swear to god–from slipping on a patch of black ice, which was later revealed to have been put there by her diabolically scheming half sister/stepmother).
The one thing Diamond and I have in common: Neither of us knows who our father is. Everyone has a theory. Personally, I’d like a name.
Really, it’s only compared to Diamond’s life that my own life seems ordinary. By most other standards, it’s still pretty messed up.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 7 Up

Mallory's mother is a big-name soap-opera star. When Mallory comes up with an idea for a daytime soap aimed at teens that would deal with real-life situations, this pedigree helps her get a shot at creating and writing it. In the process, she learns to stand up for herself and to do what is right-even if it means facing tough consequences. A collaboration among three authors-soap-opera writer Chris Van Etten, David Ozanich, and David Levithan, who is known for sensitive portrayals of teens-Likely Story occasionally has an uneven tone, as tender moments are blended with a realistic look at the soap-opera business. Still, Mallory comes across as a likable, regular teen despite growing up on television sets and having a mother as selfish and manipulative as any daytime-drama villain. Her snappy narrative is filled with a believable mix of self-doubt, scathing humor, and real emotion. The book never indulges in the glamour of the television lifestyle, but focuses on the story and characters. The novel ends abruptly with a cliff-hanger climax, leaving an opening for the next book in the series.-Amelia Jenkins, Juneau Public Library, AK

School Library Journal

YA novelist David Levithan, playwright David Ozanich and soap-opera writer Chris Van Etten team up to swell the ranks of chick-lit offerings even further. After an argument with her soap-opera-diva mother, 16-year-old everygirl Mallory blogs about the unreality of soap operas and then finds herself creating one. This amusing story, written with a twinkle and a wink, gives readers the fun of seeing the nuts and bolts of soap-opera production. It's also very metaliterary: Mallory was raised on the set of a soap opera, her personal life is like a soap opera and she, in turn, uses that life to create a realistic soap opera for teens. Despite the crackerjack punch-line ending, this novel, book one in a new series, is essentially all setup for the next volumes. Will Mallory enjoy a romance with the show's hot young star? Clash with her mother on the set? Be ostracized by her once best friend? Find love with her high school crush? To find out, fans will have to read the next installment. (Fiction. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews