For the past five years, Steph has been the most unpopular girl in school, all for an incident that happened when she was twelve – spilling a red drink on another girl’s skirt. Now that Steph’s a junior, she’s sick of being unpopular and has managed to get her hands on a book that teaches a person to be popular. Of course, being a part of the popular crowd is so much work that Steph doesn’t actually get the chance to enjoy it before things spiral out of her control.

I think I remember why I stopped reading Meg Cabot’s books in the first place – they’re all almost the same. And to be honest, this one started out feeling like a made-for-tv movie. (Model Behavior comes to mind.) It wasn’t until about three quarters of the way into the book that I really started to enjoy it.

I don’t know. I never really had the desire to be a part of the “popular crowd” in high school, so I guess I just had a hard time relating to why Steph wanted to be popular so badly. In the end the book does have a good message about being nice and not acting like those who usually make up the popular crowd, so I’ve no doubt it’s a great book for Cabot’s younger audience.

On the other hand, I really liked the fact that the book jacket was only about two thirds of the height of the actual book cover. It was very different and eye catching. ;)