Exiled to Iowa. Send Help. And Couture.

This book is targeted squarely at the junior high/high school audience. In a spirit of full disclosure and since one of the themes of this story is to be honest and up front, I must confess that I am not in that group and have not been for many years. I picked it up because it had ???Iowa??? (my home) in the title, and it sounded like it could be a fun story to read.I started reading it as the free sample from Amazon on my Kindle and almost didn???t buy it. The main character???s ego, attitude and manner (not to mention his attitude* toward my home) had me on the brink of hating him. However, that is exactly how kids that age can be: the pendulum swings from completely self-absorbed to something approaching maturity and then back again. Also, I found the description of Iowans as flannel wearing hicks especially annoying. But I soldiered on and bought the book. The character became more likeable and much more mature as the story progressed.The overall story was pretty good and kept me engaged???I wanted to know what happened next, especially in the latter parts of it. In the end, it embraces the ???teen??? too much (it even feels as if part of this could have come nearly verbatim from someone???s high school diary). There few similar books I???ve read recently that I think have an appeal beyond the demographic of their main characters: [b:Something Like Summer 10682947 Something Like Summer Jay Bell http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302546853s/10682947.jpg 15086656] and [b:The Cranberry Hush: A Novel 10768069 The Cranberry Hush A Novel Ben Monopoli http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51R05YZHWbL.SL75.jpg 15679574].*Coming in to my home and pointing out the short comings that I already know about is not an endearing trait.