La vida secreta de Rebecca Paradise (The secret life of Rebecca Paradise) is a Spanish children's book written by Pedro Mañas and illustrated by Bea Tormo.
Úrsula Jenkins is an 11-year-old girl who has just moved to a new home with her father. Úrsula claims that a magician made her mom disappear, but you shouldn't trust what she says because she has an obsession with lying, believing her lies to be more interesting than anything in her life with no friends. But a rivalry with Sofía (the popular girl at the new school) and a friendship with the computer-obsessed kid Álex will lead Úrsula to create a blog series narrating the adventures of her secret persona, the child spy Rebecca Paradise, which will blow up in popularity at her school and change her life forever.
The book was released on April 21st, 2015. It went on to win the award "El Barco de Vapor".
La vida secreta de Rebecca Paradise offers examples of the following tropes:
- Alpha Bitch: Úrsula likes to call Sofía the "ant queen" of the school, and for good reasons: not only is she the chief editor of the school's newspaper, the delegate, and the basketball's captain, but she has the love and attention of all of her classmates at any time she wants. None of this stops her from treating Úrsula like dirt and helping in her being shunned by the whole class. By the end though, Sofía being revealed as not being actually Rebecca Paradise has Álex claiming that she's no longer the "ant queen" and George asks who will be "the new monarch", though whether or not she truly lost her status for the next semester is left unclear.
- Compulsive Liar: Úrsula claims that she wants to tell the truth, but when she starts thinking about herself, she decides that her lies are more interesting that anything about her life. This is what leads her to write the Rebecca Paradise blogs, as she can find a place to not be herself and tell lies in the form of Rebecca's stories.
- Cool Kid-and-Loser Friendship: Úrsula and Sofía's relationship plays with this throughout the story. Sofía and the rest of the class seem at first to accept and befriend Úrsula, even letting her join a basketball match, up until their teacher Leanne leaves them, at which point Sofía and the rest start ignoring Úrsula, not even helping her when she falls into a puddle. Despite their teachers' efforts, Úrsula and Sofía only grow a rivalry that gets worse as it goes on, which culminates on Úrsula discovering Sofía's past life as a troublemaker in a previous school and using her Rebecca persona to threaten Sofía with revealing it to the school. Ultimately, the 2 reach a truce where Úrsula keeps the secret in exchange for Sofía taking the credit of being Rebecca, as Úrsula cannot take the stress and fame of being her anymore. Despite the 2 keeping their status afterwards, they have become legitimate friends.
- A Dog Ate My Homework: When Úrsula explains the differences between "lies" and "stories" she uses as examples that if you tell a child that there was once a bunny in a forest that cultivated carrots, it's a "story", but if you tell your teacher that a bunny ate your homework, it's a "lie".
- Identical Stranger: Úrsula and Sofía happen to be surprisingly similar, having blonde hair collected in a ponytail, the same height, (possibly) the same weight, and even the same last name of Jenkins, but are completely unrelated.
- Missing Mom: Úrsula says that a magician made her mom disappear during an act, but this is clearly a story she made up, as she refuses to tell the reader what truly happened to her. At the end, she finally explains to George how she died in a car accident after going to the magician's act.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted twice:
- Úrsula and Sofía happen to have the same last name of Jenkins, despite being completely unrelated, only adding more to their similarities. Several times, a teacher calls one of them by their last name and the other one believes that they're referring to her.
- At the end of the story, while writing her new personal blog, Úrsula reveals that her late mom's name was Rebecca, indicating that she named Rebecca Paradise after her.
- Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat:
- When explaining at the start of the story why she hates magicians, Úrsula lists rabbits and top hats as 2 of the only 3 things magicians care about in this world (along with decks of cards).
- Later in the story, the school therapist George Deveraux tells Úrsula one of his stories about his uncle Óscar, who supposedly once bought a magician's hat from which rabbits couldn't stop coming out.
- Shout-Out: Alex's room can be seen in an illustration filled with posters and comics of popular media, including Star Wars, Batman, Dragon Ball, Doctor Slump, Watchmen, and Mortadelo y Filemón.
- Teen Superspy: Úrsula writes the stories of Rebecca Paradise, who is a secret child agent sent by "the Organization" to spy in a school. Rebecca argues that it does make sense to send a child spy instead of an adult spy to a mission in a school, as if you send a grown bearded spy to act as a student, he wouldn't work as well.
