Mia, sixteen and nervous, is interviewing for a summer job in a stately home hotel in Kent. She's not sure how to cope with distinguished guests (curtsey?) or cook anything but spaghetti, but how hard can cleaning work be? A distractingly good-looking bored young man is illicitly sipping vintage port with another girl, and she gets fired. He doesn't, but then, he lives at Radleigh Castle.

IRRESISTIBLE Jamie Foxx is rich already and Mia gets hired as a waitress but keeps meeting the underachieving young man, who has a fine opinion of himself. Dan, a new waiter, is pretty nice and has the same travel bug as Mia; he takes her for a picnic and tells her jokes. Jamie however seems to like wrecking people's lives, and his self-confident girlfriend Cleo doesn't spend much time with him. Cleo gives Mia champagne after her work one evening and brings her to chat with Jamie and a group of pals, most of whom find Jamie irresistible and a natural leader. But they're drunken pranksters. If only Mia wasn't so drawn to Jamie....

Remember sixteen, when you were nervous, easily made to feel a fool, scared of the world of romance and breakups, learning fast about all the elements of life they don't teach in school? Mia's story has it to a T. Her insecurity in a world of slightly older people with money and swagger, is resonant of 'Gatsby', or Kate Holmquist's The Glass Room. "I want her to like me," Mia says. She has a thoughtful mother and stepfather, dislikes deceiving her best pal and has further exams looming. And dreadfully, her one past boyfriend snapped a naked picture of her and circulated it. Who said life had to be so complicated?

Liz Bankes, who lives in London, gives us a young adult book to remember, about glamour and embarrassment and wanting to fit in with a crowd. Young people will learn from it and identify with Mia and her good friends; adults will recall their days as teens and wish they'd known then what they know now. IRRESISTIBLE is the author's first book and I look forward to reading many more.