A white girl follows her cultural fascinations into hip-hop, graffiti and the Denver Crips gang in this mildly gritty and massively disappointing novel by JLove (a.k.a. Jennifer Calderon). Propelled by nothing much more than an overworked single mom and a perpetually stoned brother, high schooler Amber follows pal Juan into the local Crips crew, the Rollin? 30s. Despite the disadvantage of her skin color (it is white), Amber is soon completing her initiation-holding a gun on a convenience store clerk during a robbery-and earning a reputation as a graffiti tagger. The books? opening third is a fast-paced mix of danger and graffiti craft, but Amber?s drama-queen tendencies become more annoyingly apparent over a string of cheesy romances, and when Amber moves to L.A. to attend college and decides that hip-hop is the key to solving racial strife, the narrative turns insufferable. (Aug.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Amber, a white girl growing up in Denver in the late 1980s, embarks on a fictional journey that contrasts white and black America. As a "kinda cool, hip-hop loving teenager," she begins rolling with the Crips, smoking blunts, drinking and bangin', only to return to her suburban home. Although Amber is able to move between two cultures, murder, betrayal, and the arrest of several friends has her trying to figure a way out of the gang. After high school, she enrolls in a Los Angeles university and challenges the mindset of racial separation. Gritty street life fleshes out the story as an old friend is gunned down, men cheat on women, and getting high is just a way to make it through the day. Throughout this semiautobiographical first novel, the names of old-school hip-hop artists are dropped to provide a musical background. With the plot focusing on Amber's quest for love and acceptance, this is less an action novel than a character-driven study; danger occurs only sporadically. While the book's theme of crossing racial boundaries might appeal to YA readers, the mediocre prose limits it to urban libraries with thriving street lit collections.-Rollie Welch. Cleveland P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.