BAD GIRLS WITH PERFECT FACES

A love triangle takes a turn for the dark.

There never seems to be a good time for Sasha to tell her best friend, Xavier, that she is desperately in love with him—not while he’s depressed after Ivy dumps him, not when Ivy decides she wants him back, not even when Sasha comes up with a beastly plan to entrap Ivy into revealing her selfish and cheating ways. Ivy is “a tornado, unpredictable and cracklingly alive.” Sasha tells herself that she has Xavier’s best intentions at heart when she uploads a picture of a hot guy with a “muscular bicep” and sends Ivy an Instagram follow request. Ivy takes the bait and starts a text flirtation, but she continues to lure Xavier deeper into a naughty relationship. “Come to my house,” she tells him. “I promise we won’t get caught.” Sasha goes to extreme lengths to free Xavier from Ivy, and these pretty girls create some very ugly situations. Weingarten draws provocative characters with searingly sharp writing, but underneath the stylishness, the plot twists are abrupt and may leave readers with vertigo. The absence of specific racial or ethnic markers implies a white default.

A teen love story that flits through a titillating social scene and wanders into a murky moral swamp.