Review: It Started with a Dare by Lindsay Faith Rech

It Started with a Dare by Lindsay Faith Rech

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

September 2010

My Rating: 3 Stars

I thought this was a cute cover: the girl is cute, looks happy, but also looks like she has some sort of secret. Knowing nothing else about the book or the author, I decided to give it a shot.


CG Silverman has always considered herself a bit of an outsider, so when she moves to a new town and the three most popular girls in the school actually speak to her, she can't help herself. She starts with small innocent lies to impress them, but finds herself spinning a life for herself that she could have never imagined. As the newly crowned rebel of the popular crowd, she agrees to a dare from her new BFFs Alona, Grace, and Sammie that has major problem potential. When Alona's super hot older brother gets in the picture, CG's new life seems almost too good to be true.

It Started with a Dare is a story about identity and friendship. Though CG's lies can sometimes be frustrating, they speak pretty honestly to the insecurities of a teenage girl who just wants to fit in somewhere.  The speaker's crazy comparisons and potty humor can sometimes be over the top, but CG has a funny voice that you just have to love. Lindsay Faith Rech's strength in this book is her ability to go beneath the surface with each character and explore what every one is hiding beneath their constructed high school exterior.


It Started with a Dare is fun, funny, a little crazy, but always honest about the importance of being yourself.


Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

Review: Greek: Double Date by Marsha Warner

Greek: Double Date by Marsha Warner

Harlequin Teen, May 2010

Young Adult

192 pages

Casey Cartwright, Zeta Beta Zeta sorority sister at Cyprus-Rhodes College, gets herself into a bit of a bind when she agrees to go to an engineering event with her brother’s nerdy, love-struck roommate Dale—the event just happens to be the same night as the All-Greek Formal, where she already has a date with the cute new transfer student Rob.

As if two guys aren’t enough for one night, there’s also Cappie, her slacker ex-boyfriend who always seems to show up in Casey’s life—and who she may or may not still be in love with.

So what’s a nice, ambitious sorority girl to do? Try to balance all three of course, with the help of her sweet but slightly nerdy younger brother Rusty and her best friend Ashleigh, president of ZBZ.

Greek: Double Date is a fun book that tackles both the crazy lives of college students and the difficulty of working through relationships. These relationships are interesting, but the book does often get weighed down by the need to catch the reader up on the characters’ history. In that way, it’s sometimes difficult to think of the book as its own story. This book would probably be most loved by fans of ABC Family’s Greek, but it does do a good job of tackling three seasons’ worth of history for readers unfamiliar with the show.

(This review was written for my internship with TeenLibris.com.)

Review: The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell

The Carrie Diaries by Candace Bushnell

HarperCollins, April 2010

Young Adult

389 pages

(So I'm a little late, but I finally got around to reading The Carrie Diaries and figured I'd share my thoughts.)

Though the cover of The Carrie Diaries is eye catching, something about the super sweetness of it didn't make me want to read it immediately. After seeing it available for loan on my library network's e-book site, though, I decided to give it a shot (I'm always looking for quality reads for my new nook).

I have to say, I'm surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this book. The plot, though over the top at times, is still extremely relatable, in true Sex and the City form. The book's heroine, the future icon Carrie Bradshaw, fumbles through high school while still maintaining her cool. Even when her relationship with new hot guy Sebastian Kydd turns her small-town world upside down and threatens to ruin some of her best friendships, she remains the crazy but lovable character that Candance Bushnell created and Sarah Jessica Parker made so famous in the HBO series.

The Carrie Diaries has characters to love, characters to hate, moments to make you laugh, and moments that speak to the more troubling aspects of teenage life. Despite the often absurd take on high school life (these kids order fancy drinks in bars like they're grabbing milks at the cafeteria) The Carrie Diaries is a great read that goes beyond the frivolity and truly captures the spirit of a small-town high school.