Amber Appleton’s got it rough, and when I say she’s got it rough, I mean rough: the girl lives out of a bus ever since asshole Oliver kicked her and her mom out of his place. Now mom’s back out there, looking for a steady man (and a place to crash).

But don’t let that fool you. Amber is a tough cookie and one of the most upbeat and positive chicks around. Her best friends are a group of guys with varying degrees of problems – the kid with autism and so forth – and she’s tight with Jesus who she remembers from a set of books she got as a child where he is nothing but a rock star. Oh, and she’s tight with Father Chee, the minister at the Korean Catholic Church in the ghetto and with Private Jackson, an old man who served in Vietnam and writes haiku for fun.

But Amber’s life is turned upside down when her mother gets involved with the wrong guy.

Sorta Like a Rock Star is the kind of book that will smack you in the face. It’s slow paced at the beginning with Amber’s inner dialog a bit meandering. She’s got a habit of using some words for emphasis again and again which grated on me. I couldn’t quite get her or what she was going for with it, but I trudged onward. There was just enough personality to Amber and enough intrigue by her to push through.

By part three of Quick’s novel, though, everything changes. Amber’s routine and what she’s come to see as stable things in an otherwise unpredictable life dismantle and the styling and pacing race along. One of the biggest stables in her life is permanently removed, and the second one comes close too. Her voice shifts from the one of positivity to nothing at all, and she stops attending school, her volunteer shifts at the church, and her job all together. This is where, as a reader, I really came to understand Amber. Where I was unsure of her in the first two parts, I was completely engrossed by her story and her pain from this part forward.

But don’t worry – this book isn’t all about pain. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. When Amber was the strength in a lot of other people’s lived, despite the things she herself faced, people took note and in time, that favor is returned to her in ways she cannot fathom.

Sorta Like a Rock Star is the kind of novel you hand sell to your readers. There is a lot going on inside it, but it takes a patient reader to unlock everything that happens. I think a lot of readers may see themselves in Amber’s mental position, working through a lot of challenges in their own lives but maintaining some spot of hope things will look up. The relationships Amber develops within her community are authentic and the interactions among her own peers realistic and, at times, heartbreaking. She works for the underdog and she, too, is the underdog.

Try this one out on your fans of Jandy Nelson’s The Sky is Everywhere. They aren’t exactly readalikes, but they do share many elements, including relationship building through grief, the use of poetry as a coping mechanism, and patience as a reader, rewarded in the end. I’d suggest being prepared here to both have a laugh a bit and maybe even cry a bit, but you will walk away knowing Amber is real.

True? True.