Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales

Last night, I finished the final half of Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales.


It’s Violet’s junior year at the Westfield School. She thought she’d be focusing on getting straight As, editing the lit mag, and figuring out how to talk to boys without choking on her own saliva. Instead, she’s just trying to hold it together in the face of cutthroat academics, her crush’s new girlfriend, and the sense that things are going irreversibly wrong with her best friend, Katie.

When Katie starts making choices that Violet can’t even begin to fathom, Violet has no idea how to set things right between them. Westfield girls are trained for success—but how can Violet keep her junior year from being one huge, epic failure?


My thoughts: I liked it! Violet was someone I could really relate to, that is, if I were an ivy-league student attending a $250,000 a year all-girl private school, which would cost my parents every dime they had to pay (just like Violet's.) She was smart, ambitious, and studious; and she was not one of those girls who knew about clothes and make-up--she went as casual as could be. She was also rather clueless about boys with never knowing how to talk to them or even breathe the same air as them (we all feel that way, don't we?)

I also liked the friendship between Violet and Katie--true BFFs to the end. But then things start to change with Katie. Suddenly, she wants to drink, steal, blow off school, and even start dating some Starbucks loser like Martin. Seriously, what did she see in that guy? Ewe! I didn't like the riff this guy created between the two friends. But, luckily, Violet had problems of her own with trying to score the perfect grades, edit her school magazine, and get Scott Walsh to notice her. I did think she was a little too obsessed with that guy almost to the extent that it was just plain nutty. It was crazy how many times she thought the guy was "in love" with her and how she thought he was "god's gift to womankind." Oh, please. No guy is that great.

This is a clean YA novel (not dirty like that I want Candy book.) And, even though it's like 400 pages long, you get through it in practically one night. It may have been a little too clueless for my taste, but, overall, good.