Valerie Hobbs writes about young female characters confronting a society full of difficult choices. For Hobbs, maturity is earned through the crucible of experience. Hobbs recognizes teenagers are not immune from the problems of the adult world. Suicide, alcoholism, abuse, death, and teen sex enter her narratives, grabbing the reader's attention. Loss, especially parental loss, is a theme that appears often in her books. In her debut novel How Far Would You Have Gotten If I Hadn't Called You Back", Hobbs writes the story of a young woman with a love of both racing cars and the men who drive them. Hobbs's 1995 coming-of-age novel has been praised by critics for its original and sensitive portrait of a teenager struggling to find herself amid a sea of contradictory influences. Hobbs has also written Get It While It's Hot. Or Not, another young adult novel with a focus on friendships...