BE STRONG & CURVACEOUS

Set in a ritzy prep school in San Francisco, this series entry is like an ethnically diverse, toned-down Gossip Girls with a difference—the protagonists’ religious faith sets moral parameters on their behavior. The story focuses on Carly, the Latina of the group, whose difficult new roommate, Mac, the daughter of a Scottish earl, shakes up the school’s social hierarchy while snubbing Carly and her religious friends. But Mac is not as invulnerable as she seems; in fact, she’s been getting a series of increasingly creepy e-mails. When Mac and the school are threatened with physical violence, Carly, with God’s guidance, has to figure out how to save the day, while still negotiating the tricky minefields of love, status, popularity and fashion. Except for Carly’s refusal to drink an alcoholic beverage, the God part is mostly peripheral to the action, and some of the characters’ concerns seem inconsistent with spirituality. Also jarring is the way the novel abruptly lurches from soap opera to thriller. Nonetheless, this definitely fills a niche. (Fiction. 10 & up)