Review: Mostly Good Girls

Title: Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales
Published: October 5, 2010 by Simon Pulse
Source: Bought for Kindle

The higher you aim, the farther you fall….

It’s Violet’s junior year at the Westfield School. She thought she’d be focusing on getting straight As, editing the lit mag, and figuring out how to talk to boys without choking on her own saliva. Instead, she’s just trying to hold it together in the face of cutthroat academics, her crush’s new girlfriend, and the sense that things are going irreversibly wrong with her best friend, Katie.
When Katie starts making choices that Violet can’t even begin to fathom, Violet has no idea how to set things right between them. Westfield girls are trained for success—but how can Violet keep her junior year from being one huge, epic failure?

Review

I have heard great things about this novel and I was a little disappointed by it.  Maybe I am used to big drama in books about high school and 'Mostly Good Girls' was not about big drama.  This novel is a come-of-age tale of Violet and how she deals with change. 

Violet goes to a very small and exclusive all-girls school where everyone knows everyone and everything about each other.  Where money and prestige talk more than grades or good behaviour.   Violet is a good student, a good friend and a good daughter and she goes through the typical teenage angst.  Her point of view had me laughing out loud more than once (*weird looks from my hubby* as I was reading in the car :) but I still found the plot a little weak.

Violet and Katie are best friends that share everything, even a crush on the same boy, without incident.  The only conflict comes when Katie starts acting up, just because she needs a way to revel against her too-perfect-life.  Violet doesn't take Katie's, or any other change for that matter, well.  The novel focuses on how she grows by accepting that nothing is stagnant.

An enjoyable and short read.  I will definitely read Ms. Sales next book.

About the cover:  I liked the cover, but I don't think this is something that neither Violet or Katie might wear :) It does look very 'teenager'