Catherine

Gr 9 Up—As she did in Jane (Little, Brown, 2010), Linder updates another gothic romance, this time Wuthering Heights. Catherine, the daughter of a punk rock club owner in Manhattan, is true rock music royalty. Her teenage daughter, Chelsea, has grown up in small-town Massachusetts thinking her mother died when Chelsea was three. She discovers that Catherine actually left her and her father to go back to New York City, so Chelsea sets off to see if the woman is still alive. Lindner alternates between Catherine's and Chelsea's narration. Catherine's tale (told when she herself is a teen) moves at a quicker pace and is all sweeping emotion and histrionics about how she fell in love fast and hard with Hence, a rising rock star who worked at her dad's club, The Underground. Chelsea's story (which takes place 20 years later) is more measured as she seeks to unravel the mystery of her mother's past. The sense of time is a bit skewed, but teens will no doubt forgive these blemishes as they are caught up in the drama of true love never dying. Catherine and her husband tend toward stereotypes (the perfect woman, the milquetoast professor), but Chelsea and Hence, whom Chelsea meets when she goes to The Underground looking for clues about her mother, both learn and grow as the tale is told. Catherine is as tragic, emo, and over-the-top as the novel that inspired it. Romance fans will eat it up.—Geri Diorio, Ridgefield Library, CT