And that, says the Berkeley author, is the point. Readers will spend considerable time discussing whether there might be a little - or a lot - of Carly in every one of us. Suffice it to say, Carly gets caught in the most humiliating way possible.

Carly doesn’t just troll Facebook pages, she follows her ex’s new beloved from lattes to yoga, through the streets of New York and into - well, you’ll have to read it to find out. Instead of telling the tale from the victim’s perspective, the protagonist is Carly, a heartsick teen whose first casual, online peek at her ex’s new sweetheart turns into a raging obsession. While her past books have been set in Berkeley skate parks and Cape Cod beaches, Graham’s latest territory is close to home for anyone who lives with teens, set in the world of Facebook, webcams and cell phones. And as she does in her other novels - the Berkeley-centric “Thou Shalt Not Dump the Skater Dude and Other Commandments I have Broken” and “My Not-So-Terrible Time at the Hippie Hotel” - the creative writing teacher delves into the psyches of teens bruised by the vicissitudes of teen life, which is, frankly, messy. Mary’s College professor’s young adult novel is landing on bookstore shelves at a time when headlines about teen obsession, dating abuse and cyber-stalking are splashed across newspapers and websites on a weekly basis. That’s what makes Rosemary Graham’ “Stalker Girl” so timely. And it’s a matter of mere clicks for a heartbroken swain to find out everything worth knowing about his or her replacement.

Boy meets girl, goes Facebook official, then boom - it’s over.Įxcept that in the 21st century world of Facebook, texts and tweets, nothing’s ever really over.

Stalker Girl by Rosemary Graham