Tori’s never given much thought to boyfriends or climbing the popularity ladder until she spends the summer apart from her nouveau riche BFF, Sienna. Sienna has come back from vacation with hair extensions, sophistication and a long-distance boyfriend named Antonio. Tori enjoys the popularity she’s acquired as a result of Sienna’s friendship, but she also feels a little competitive, so she makes up a fake boyfriend named Sebastian. Even as Tori realizes that Sienna’s boyfriend is also fake, she gets tangled in her own web of lies. Though she worries about losing her new friends as well as Sienna, Tori knows she has to come clean about Sebastian. Tori’s honesty and sense of humor make for an exuberant read. The dialogue is realistic, and Springer brings refreshing personalities to standard character types; Tori’s parents are divorced, but both parents are active in her life, for instance, and the popular girls aren’t mean. A subplot about a teacher’s drinking feels extraneous, but it doesn’t distract from this sweet story about truth and friendship. (Fiction. 11-14)
