How to buy a love of reading

the long version

Fall in love with reading all over again.To Carley Wells, words are the enemy. Her tutors innumerable SAT flashcards. Her personal trainers fifty-seven pounds overweight assessment. And the endless reading assignments from her English teacher, Mr. Nagel. When Nagel reports to her parents that she has answered What is your favorite book with Never met one I liked, they decide to fix what he calls her intellectual impoverishment. They will commission a book to be written just for herone shell have to lovethat will impress her teacher and the whole town of Fox Glen with their familys devotion to the arts. They will be patrons the Medicis of Long Island. They will buy their daughter The Love Of Reading.Impossible though it is for Carley to imagine loving books, she is in love with a young bibliophile who cares about them more than anything. Anything, that is, but a good bottle of scotch. Hunter Cay, Carleys best friend and Fox Glens resident golden boy, is becoming a stranger to her lately as he drowns himself in F. Scott Fitzgerald, booze, and Vicodin.When the Wellses move writer Bree McEnroyauthor of a failed meta-novel about Odysseus failed journey home through the Internetinto their mansion to write Carleys book, Carleys sole interest in the project is to distract Hunter from drinking and give them something to share. But as Hunters behavior becomes erratic and dangerous, she finds herself increasingly drawn into the fictional world Bree has created, and begins to understand for the first time the power of storiesthose we read, those we want to believe in, and most of all, those we tell ourselves about ourselves. Stories powerful enough to destroy a person. Or save her.