(No overt spoilers in the review, but it may reference important plot points and twists)

Up until the summer she's fourteen years old, in 1975, Mary Jane has lived a prim, proper, and sheltered existence. An only child, she has two friends (twins) who are nearly as sheltered as she is, and she spends the rest of the time with her mother, learning how to keep house and cook. When the twins go off to summer camp, Mary Jane decides to stay home for the summer and get a job. She finds a job as a summer nanny for 5-year-old Izzy Cone whose father is a psychiatrist and mother is busy doing just about everything else. Mary Jane really takes a shine to Izzy and vice versa. They spend their days doing safe activities and learning to clean up (since the Cones' house frequently looks like a tornado has come through).

But Mary Jane's worldview really starts to change when the Cones tell her that they'll be having live-in guests for the summer, and that Mary Jane is not allowed to tell anyone about these guests because they're famous. Instantly she knows Sheba (I think Sheba is supposed to kind of be like Cher) because her variety show with her brothers was one of the only tv shows Mary Jane was allowed to watch. Sheba's husband, Jimmy, is a rockstar in a famous rock band that Mary Jane has never listened to, and he's there to get help from Dr. Cone for the summer as he gets sober.

Mary Jane soon finds herself feeling more a part of a family at the Cones' house -- a big family that includes Jimmy and Sheba, massive fights, but also lots of love and hugs and kisses -- but this comes at the cost of realizing that her family is somewhat cold and distant. She has very little relationship with her father even though she sees him every day. He's quiet and rarely speaks to her or takes an interest in what she does. Her mother is determined to decide what's appropriate for her and what's not. They never hug. Her parents never kiss her or tell her they love her. She begins to pull away from her own family in order to spend more time with Izzy and the Cones. Things come to a head when her mother realizes that Mary Jane has been lying to her and what she's been exposed to all summer.

There are some undertones of racism in the book, particularly when Mary Jane is discovered to have visited a record store in a part of Baltimore that her parents deem unsavory (she's seen in a photo in the paper with black people, which her parents believe means she was in danger). Even more than racism, there are undertones of antisemitism as Mary Jane's father's only real concern with her job is that her employer has a Jewish last name and so he wonders what country club they belong to because hardly anyone lets Jews join.

I'm a sucker for a good coming-of-age novel and this one had a good mix of nostalgia thrown in. It addressed societal issues without feeling like a soapbox -- they were just integrated well into the story. This book keeps being described as Daisy Jones & The Six meets Almost Famous. I didn't find it that much like Daisy Jones at all. I could see a little bit of Almost Famous, but mostly it was just a story about a teenager whose worldview expands over a summer when she's exposed to different belief systems, lifestyles, and music than what she's been allowed to experience before. It changes her, but for the better. At the end, I really felt like Mary Jane was going to grow up to be ok.