Reviewed by Lynn Crow for TeensReadToo.com

DIVA tells the story of Caitlin McCourt, a sixteen-year-old opera fan and singer, as she attempts to break out of her old life by transferring to a performing arts school. Among the things Caitlin is escaping are an abusive ex-boyfriend, vacuous "friends" who don't understand her interests, and the advice of her overbearing and superficial mother. However, her new school comes with its own share of difficulties. She has to learn to dance and act as well as sing, and she's afraid she's too "normal" to fit in with the artsy students.

Caitlin is an incredibly sympathetic character. Despite being burdened with a mother who's more interested in flirting with Caitlin's guy friends than supporting her daughter, and a father who has started a new family that rarely includes her, she manages to believe in and look after herself. Her voice is realistic and open, letting the readers in on all of her insecurities (which many teens will share). Her decisions make sense for her, even if readers don't always agree with them, and throughout the story she comes more and more into her own.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Caitlin's story is how her relationship with her mother evolves. Much of Caitlin's personality appears to be a product of her mother's hot-and-cold attitude toward her daughter. As Caitlin steps out from her mother's shadow, she sees not only her own needs and desires more clearly, but also her mother's. Caitlin's discovery that there's more to her mother than she realized is poignant and believable.

DIVA will be enjoyed by any teen, especially girls, struggling with the pressures of friends and family. With its colorful and well-developed characters, it's an easy story to get drawn into. The only criticism I could make is that the novel doesn't offer a great deal more than other good titles with similar subject matter, but what it does offer is so involving that it's hard to complain. ( )

Diva a Novel

This book is about a girl that had a great talent! The only problem was that none of her friends or even her school knew about her talent. Her talent was opera. Caitlin was a pretty girl that was very popular but she didn’t want to be popular for her looks or her friends. So she left her friends and her school to go to an arts school. She loved it there and she was known for her amazing talent for singing. This is what she wanted and the way she got there was with determination. Even if it was behind her crazy mothers back.
One thing that I liked about this book was that the author (Alex Flinn) related to teenagers. She really understood what she was writing about. My favorite part in Diva a Novel was the part when she sang opera for the first time in her new school. Everyone loved her singing and this was the part in the book where Caitlin was becoming happy with her life style. This life style was the one she wanted to have as an opera star.
Something that I didn’t like about this book was that there were so many characters. There were too many that were not needed. This made it hard to fallow along because I would have to know all the little characters that were not needed. My least favorite character in the book was the mom. I didn’t like the mom because she was mean to her daughter and didn’t let her fallow her dreams. This is why Caitlin had to go behind her back to get into the school of her dreams. The mom also dated a married man but that’s a long story.
The theme of this novel was to be yourself and fallow your dreams. If Caitlin did not do either of these she would not be where she was at the end of the book and that is where she wanted to be. When Caitlin was herself some of her friends didn’t like her but she made new and better friends. Then she fallowed her dreams by going to the school she wanted and not caring what other people thought of her. This is how she became an opera star. This was a good book and I would recommend it to teenage girls.

Richie's Picks: DIVA by Alex Flinn, Harper Tempest, October 2006, ISBN: 0-06-056843-7; Libr. ISBN: 0-06-056845-3

"There's only one direction in the faces that I see;
It's upward to the ceiling, where the chamber's said to be.
Like the forest fight for sunlight, that takes root in every tree.
They are pulled up by the magnet, believing that they're free.
" --Genesis, "The Carpet Crawlers" from the rock opera, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Rock opera is about as close to opera as I usually get. But my lack of enthusiasm for the real thing wouldn't bother sixteen year old Opera_Grrrl, aka Caitlin McCourt. She is well aware that it is not everyone's cup of tea, but that does not at all diminish her passion for experiencing and singing opera. Furthermore, my own lack of interest in experiencing opera did not in any way diminish my becoming thoroughly and enthusiastically engaged in DIVA, the story that begins with Caitlin's successfully auditioning to become a student at Miami High School of the Arts, and leaving behind her old school in the wake of the serious events in her life that were chronicled in Alex Flinn's first book, BREATHING UNDERWATER.

(But don't worry about needing to read that book before reading DIVA. I still haven't gotten a chance to read BREATHING UNDERWATER. This is not like a fantasy trilogy where it's essential to go in order.)

"The thing about losing a lot of weight is that it feels temporary, like you're just a thin fatgirl, and one good Big Mac will send you exploding from your jeans again. I weighed a hundred and five when I left [the weight reduction] camp last year. Since then I've gained and lost the same fifteen pounds a dozen times. Right now, I weigh one-fifteen, which is what the weight charts say you're supposed to weigh at five-three. The guy who made the weight chart (and I'm sure it was a guy) didn't go to my school, though. At my school, the most you can weigh is one-ten, even if you're five-foot-nine."

Some may question the wisdom of Caitlin's ongoing struggle/obsession with her weight, and her incorporating the daily tale of the scale into her online journal. I found the teen's search for a consistent nutritional regime to be both realistic and admirable. In light of the horrifying estimates of childhood obesity and diabetes I discussed earlier this year in reviewing Eric Schlosser's CHEW ON THIS: EVERYTHING YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT FAST FOOD, I found a teen character here who has an ongoing investment in maintaining a healthy weight and who is not suffering from an eating disorder. Of course, getting away from her old school and her old friends aids in her being significantly more sane about it.

Another bit of sanity that I found in the story is the reality that it is not sufficient for Caitlin to have a gift for singing opera. She needs the commitment to work long and hard every day to achieve what she desires. Having been accepted into the performing arts school based upon her singing audition, she immediately struggles with the dancing that is required for class ensemble performances but, because of that commitment, she seeks assistance and does the work necessary to make the cut for the show. Most telling is a scene in which an older student with lots of initial promise but a preference for partying is informed after a mediocre performance that she should change majors.

"At lunch, I tell Gigi [about Mary]...
"Gigi rolls her eyes. 'You said yourself the girl wasn't very good. Rowena probably did her a huge favor. Why does it bother you?'
" 'But can you imagine not singing anymore? Why wake up in the morning?'
" 'But that's how you feel about it. If she felt that way, she'd have practiced more. Then she wouldn't be getting this news.'
" 'I guess.'
" 'Absolutely. It's like a reality show where they vote the weaklings off first. When you're five and dancing in your mom's dresses, everyone's a superstar. But then some people get picked to be "listeners" in music class, and others don't make the good chorus in middle school, and others don't get in here. And some people screw up. But that's not you, Cait. You can make it.'
" 'I guess,' I repeat.
"But that night and both days of the weekend, I sing scales for an extra hour."

I haven't even mentioned Caitlin's ongoing struggle to deal with the aftermath of having been the victim of physical abuse by the hands of her boyfriend in BREATHING UNDERWATER, or the struggle of Caitlin's dealing with a mother who resorts to making herself feel better at Caitlin's expense, and who becomes involved in a very questionable relationship herself. In fact, Alex Flinn packs an amazing amount of high-interest story into this book.

But for this oblivious-to-opera Deadhead, I was entranced, above all, by the aspects of the story involving a complex teen with a passion for a relatively unusual flavor of performing arts, who pays attention to priorities and is faced with overcoming a fear of failure while simultaneously dealing with the rest of her life.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

A nice followup to Breathing Underwater. Takes the female lead through the years after her abusive relationship. ( )

light fun. This book is the sequel to Breathing Underwater, which was about a boy who beat his girlfriend, told from his perspective. Diva is what happens to the girl, Caitlin, after the relationship is over. ( )