Necklace of Kisses by Francesca Lia BlockHarperCollins, 2005

Weetzie Bat is all grown up (Cherokee and Witch Baby are in college!) and life with her secret-agent lover-man isn’t as perfect as it should be. So she packs a suitcase and heads off to the pink hotel, where, of course, she meets all sorts of interesting people, and all sorts of strange things happen. Block’s prose is as luminescent as always: Los Angeles of the jacaranda flowers twinkling lights, city of canyons and punk shows Sunset Boulevard; sushi and champagne and grapefruit juice with tonic water. The story’s fairy-tale frame is wonderful, and familiar characters mostly feel like logical progressions of themselves from the earlier books: Witch Baby with her head shaved, Ping and Valentine still together. The few chick-lit details annoyed me (the cover design, the fact that Weetzie has a cell phone and watches TV [Sex and the City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer] and reads fashion magazines), but there were enough magical or beautiful or smart details (a character named Hilda Doolittle!) to make up for it.