Here We Are Now by Jasmine Warga (review)

After years of wondering about the father whom she never met and whose identity her mother would never confirm, sixteen-year-old Taliah finds him literally on her doorstep, ringing her bell to ask her to come with him to meet her dying grandfather. Since he's the famous rock musician Julian Oliver, Taliah's game to go (her mother is out of the country so permission isn't needed), and she drags her friend Harlow along for support. Once in Julian's small Indiana hometown, she learns more about him and his family, and also about the history her mother never revealed. The secret-rockstar-dad fantasy is played out here with emotion and sincerity, and Julian's multi-decade love for Taliah's mother is soapily satisfying. It's also contrived as all get out (apparently no one in fandom knows that the rock star was in a relationship with this woman for years), and the book weirdly allows Taliah to be taken to task for being emotionally closed to the father who abandoned her with no substantive justification. Additionally, the flashbacks to the relationship between young Julian and Taliah's Jordanian mother shed light on the backstory but lend little interest to the main plot. This therefore lacks the emotional impact of the author's My Heart and Other Black Holes (BCCB 3/15), but readers may still be unable to resist the premise of a famous father turning up out of the blue. DS