POP PRINCESS

Despite the promising title and the dust jacket of a girl’s bare midriff with a navel diamond, this venture into the world of pop stardom falls surprisingly flat. Fifteen-year-old Wonder Blake, once a regular on a TV show, encounters a producer who recognizes her star potential. Wonder’s family has been disintegrating since the death of her older sister, so Wonder seizes the chance to leave her troubles behind and enter the glamorous world of Britney Spears wannabes. But because Cohn is making the point that stardom involves far more hard work than fun, this is no romp about fashion and wealth. At the same time, it lacks dramatic tension, since, for Wonder, the pop music world turns out to be relatively tame rather than exploitative. Wonder herself is a likable, somewhat confused teenager trying to figure out what she wants from life, but the secondary characters are as underdeveloped as her relationships, including a sexual one, with them. Not as memorable as Cohn’s Gingerbread (2002), this will nevertheless attract readers with its details about the pop world. (Fiction. YA)