AWKWARD

A brilliant but socially inept girl finds herself starring in a YouTube video gone viral when she knocks over a football player and tries to give him CPR. Can she survive the humiliation?

Mackenzie tries to keep her head down as the entire nation laughs at her for her awkward video moves. The popular “Notables” in her high school sneer. The press swarms her at school. But her notoriety takes a positive turn when the hottest rock group around turns her film into a music video with a new hit song, boosting her fame even further. Suddenly she receives in the mail dozens of boxes filled with free designer clothes. She winds up singing with the hottie lead singer on stage. The film of her performance also goes viral when it turns out that Mackenzie has real talent. All these events lead to her sudden social rise in her high school’s hierarchy. But will the fame go to her head? Bates keeps her prose light, always focusing on the comedy as she lampoons high-school popularity, and gives narrator Mackenzie some good one-liners: “My life had officially become stranger than a Tim Burton movie.” It all becomes a bit preposterous, but hey, it’s a comedy, and a good one.

Very funny. Should please lots of readers, awkward or not.