Sixteen-year-old Allie is an analog kid in a digital world. With a part-time job at Bob & Bob Records in Berkeley, California, and a new blog and ’zine under the nom de guerre The Vinyl Princess, Allie is a music devotee – nay, fanatic – with charmingly eclectic tastes and a winning, if occasionally acerbic, attitude. She lives with her mother, her father having left more than a year ago. She has close friends, a funky neighbourhood, a record store full of acquaintances, and a serious crush on an older man.

This new novel from Edmonton-born, California-based Yvonne Prinz, whose Not Fair, Clare was shortlisted for the Red Maple Award, follows Allie through one summer, as her pleasant and familiar existence is shaken by developments on every front. Not only is her mother starting to date, but her best friend Kit, whose boyfriend (a drummer) is cheating on her, is considering breast enhancement surgery. Plus, Bob & Bob is suffering in a world of digital music piracy, and a pair of daring thieves is preying on neighbourhood businesses.

Owing to the significant music-fan content of the book and its record-store setting, the publicity material for The Vinyl Princess cites Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity as a touchstone. It’s not a bad comparison, but a more apt pop culture reference is Pretty in Pink, the 1986 John Hughes film starring Molly Ringwald. And that’s a compliment. Prinz has created in Allie a sharp-witted, wilfully eccentric character whose story resonates with familiar emotional truths. There are few of the histrionics of contemporary YA fiction here: no sexual brinkmanship, no drug abuse, no heavy-handed moralizing. Instead, The Vinyl Princess is a winning novel with a protagonist who will make a wonderful role model for any reader whose tastes run even slightly counter to the mainstream.