TMI

A conflict over a mysterious boy met on the Internet leads two best friends into a fight, both online and offline.

The third-person narration alternates chapter by chapter between the two girls’ points of view. Meg, a driven artist, constantly paints Chase Gallagher, the boy with whom she refuses to become involved lest he interfere with her plan to go to college and build a stable future. Bailey, whose choices of boyfriends Meg constantly judges, concocts a bizarre plan to spend time with Chase in hopes that Meg will become jealous and admit her true feelings. Meanwhile, Bailey meets a boy named Ryder West playing an online game, and tension builds between the two friends as Bailey hides her involvement with Ryder. She reasons that Meg will see the lack of pictures on his Facebook wall and his unwillingness to meet in person as causes for suspicion. As the conflict between the two girls escalates, it spreads into social media, culminating in Bailey’s post of a humiliating incident from Meg’s elementary school years. Amid the histrionics, there are a few poignant moments, but readers have to slog through overblown scheming, catfighting and a climax involving a bloodstained canvas to get there. Relentlessly melodramatic. (Fiction. 12-18)