Alice has always tried to be a decent person. She gets good grades, comes home on time, and has never really given her dad and her stepmom any reason to worry. But now that junior year of high school has started, Alice is a little sick of people assuming she’s a goody-goody, so she decides to start shaking things up. First there are the dates with Tony, a cute senior who’s a lot more experienced than Alice. Then the fights with her stepmom about the new cat, the car, and everything else start. But when Alice sneaks off to a party that her parents don’t know about and a near-tragedy follows, she starts to realize every choice has a consequence, and danger rarely leads to good ones.
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Sexual Content - 3/5
3/5
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Violence - 0/5
0/5
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Language - 2/5
2/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 2/5
2/5
Summary
Reviewer Name: sam¬iam Alice takes a lot of risks in this title in the series. As her big group of friends break off into smaller groups Alice and her best friends Liz and Pamela find themselves on the receiving end of some girl¬on¬girl hate. They navigate it fairly well, but Alice struggles with labels that paint her as boring and Miss Goody Two¬shoes. In an effort to defy those labels she takes risks with a senior boy who shows an interest in her and allows him to explore her body both above and below the belt. In an attempt to hold on to the old group Alice attends a social gathering the ends with drunk driving and a car accident. And in a speech class at school, she and her classmates explore various controversial topics such as sex before marriage, animals used in scientific experimentation, and lowering the legal drinking age. Throughout this turbulent book Alice uses her upbringing to reason her way through a difficult teenage year and I appreciated the insider view of her thought process, even when it lead her to making a few mistakes. Overall, a realistic look at the junior year of high school for one teenage girl who feels pressure from friends, boyfriends, teachers, and family to be the version of herself that they expect when she's just trying to figure out who she is. Red flags: language, sex, drinking, controversial topics.