Review: Mostly Good Girls

Mostly Good Girls
Leila Sales
2010; Simon Pulse; ISBN 978-1-4424-0679-7 (hardcover)

Summary:  Violet's junior year should be just like she planned.  There's tasks like lots of studying in order to keep up at her private school and editing the literary magazine.  Then there's spending time with her best friend Katie, and maybe even finding a way to talk to her crush, Scott Walsh.  But things don't go according to plan.  Violet loses her position on the lit mag and discovers a secret about Scott.  Worst of all, Katie suddenly becomes a different person, making choices that Violet doesn't understand or like.  Will Violet be able to hold on to Katie, or will her junior year be completely ruined?

The tangles of friendship are explored in this contemporary novel.  Violet and Katie's long-standing friendship is authentically presented, full of inside jokes and mutual concern.  The world of a rigorous prep school is well-captured, showing the pressures to which teens are subjected.  As the story reaches its conclusion, the reader finds that Violet and Katie's friendship, although changed, is still strong.  Mostly Good Girls would pair nicely with Not That Kind of Girl by Siobhan Vivian.