Author: Kieran Scott
Pages: 278
Publication: May 25, 2010
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Summary taken from goodreads:
Ally Ryan would rather be in Maryland. She would rather be anywhere, in fact, than Orchard Hill, site of her downfall. Well, not hers exactly—but when your father’s hedge fund goes south and all your friends lose their trust funds, things don’t look so sunny for you. Her mother moved her to Maryland to flee the shame, but now they’re moving back. Back to the country-club, new-car-every-year, my-family-came-over-on-the-Mayflower lifestyle that Ally has outgrown. One bright spot, however, is gorgeous, intense Jake Graydon. But it won’t be easy for the two of them to be together—not if his friends (her former friends) have anything to say about it. Is Ally ready to get thrown back into the drama of the life she left behind?
3 STARS - I LIKED IT
MY REVIEW:
What I learned from this book: when threatened, girls will become bitches.
Okay, so there were reasons as to why they were mean, but really, that whole pack mentality where they were always trying to maintain each other's approval was annoyingly true. I wish people, especially teens, would understand that trying to fit in is both exhausting and just not fun, as Chloe reveals near the end.
I'm just glad that Ally, the main character, was a lot smarter than that. Sure, she tried to get back with her old friends in the beginning, but that was only because she thought that everyone would be able to put the past behind them and get over it. Yeah... that didn't happen. So when all of her old friends froze her out, she realized that she didn't want to be their friend anymore, blew off the guy who was too chickenshit to do anything to help her, and made some new friends, and I was like WHOO! GO ALLY! because she really didn't deserve those selfish bastards who didn't want her back because of their own personal secrets.
But Ally wasn't totally smart either. I understood that even though her old friends were acting like bitches, Ally still believed them and gave them more than one chance because she really did want things to be like how they were before she had to move away in shame two years ago, because she missed them and everything. But really, was secretly dating Jake going to help anything? I mean, they decided to keep it a secret because Jake's friends--her old friends--we're going to give her shit about it. He obviously wasn't going to do anything about it.
Jake really got on my nerves. He really didn't deserve Ally; his inaction irked me. The guy was a manslut before he met her, and he was too afraid to do anything once he found out the truth about Ally, only helping her out a few times, and that was usually when they were alone. I get that it's hard to go against your friends, but if you really liked someone, wouldn't you grow a backbone and try to help them out? Then again, this was the guy who almost wimped out when Ally asked him to hang out with some of her friends at a park.
Like I said earlier, there were reasons for everyone's actions, and that was what made the book so easily readable. The book realistically portrayed how people would react to certain situations--whether they were rich or not--so it wasn't hard to imagine someone you know or even yourself if you were put into that situation.
Even though I liked this book, I'm not sure if I want to read the sequel, since it seems to become even more unnecessarily complicated.
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