How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier

With a 14-year-old heroine and a title like "How to Ditch Your Fairy," it should be pretty obvious that this read is more fun than serious.  Charlie is a freshman in high school in a world that's based on ours but not quite the same.  In this world, kids go to specialty high schools — her school is for sports-inclined kids, and has lots of rules that seem over the top by our standards — and everyone has a fairy that gives them luck in some special area.  For instance, her best friend Ro has a clothes shopping fairy (she always finds great clothes for great prices), one of the girls at school has a boy fairy (makes all the boys her age adore her), and Charlie's mother has a fairy that ensures she always knows what her kids are up to (every kid's worst nightmare!).

Charlie thinks her life sucks, however, because her fairy isn't very helpful — at least not to her!  She has a parking fairy, which means that she always gets the best parking spots, but since she's not old enough to drive yet it just means that everyone else is always vying to get her in their cars with them.  She wants a better fairy, so she is trying to "starve" hers by not getting into a car until its gone, which means she is constantly getting into trouble for being late.

Although the book deals with a lot of typical teenage problems (whether the boy she likes will like her in return), it's a bit tongue-in-cheek at times because of the fairy thing.  When I saw that the main character was only 14, I was worried it would feel too young for me, since YA books are usually written for kids a couple of years younger than the main character — but because the book turned out to be so much fun, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit!  Not a particularly serious read, but if you like YA and want to read something more light-hearted than the typical dark fantasy romance that is so popular right now, you'll really like this one!