Populazzi Blog Tour and Giveaway!

Populazzi
by Elise Allen

Cara has never been one of those girls: confident, self-possessed, and always ready with the perfect thing to say. A girl at the very top of the popularity tower. One of the Populazzi.

Now, junior year could change everything. Cara’s moving to a new school, and her best friend urges her to seize the moment—with the help of the Ladder. Its rungs are relationships, and if Cara transforms into the perfect girlfriend for guys ever-higher on the tower, she’ll reach the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi.

The Ladder seems like a lighthearted social experiment, a straight climb up, but it quickly becomes gnarled and twisted. And when everything goes wrong, only the most audacious act Cara can think of has a chance of setting things even a little bit right. (description from Amazon.com)

A mostly hilarious (only slightly cringe-inducing) roller coaster ride through the rungs of popularity! Wow. Elise Allen nailed the clique scene at most high schools. You've got the populazzi (also known in popular culture as the perfects/the plastics/the elite/the upper eschelon), your cool outsiders, your cool club based cliques, your not so cool club based cliques, your fringe kids, and your dorks. Yup. It's all there and it's all realistic. I was amazed how quickly this book threw me right back in to my high school years...hence the cringes.

Allen's writing is fresh and fun. The cringes were all due to my memories, not the story, I promise! Though there are moments when I felt bad for Cara and her best friend Claudia...they just want to fit in sooo badly. I've totally been there. It takes a lot of guts to stand out and just be yourself. I have to say that some of my favorite characters in the book were the kids who just did that. They were just into what they were into and they didn't care what anyone else thought. Kudos! If we all could be that self possessed in high school the world would be a much better place!

Anyway, Cara's journey up the ladder to the populazzi is fun to read, funny, and rings totally true. The dialogue works, even in the quirky discussions where Shakespeare is sprinkled in, or kids randomly drop into song. The interactions between the teens absolutely reminded me of my high school years, including the embarrasing moments... I loved how Cara sees and experiences all different sections of the high school experience before figuring out where she really feels comfortable. It was a fun journey.

Want to climb the rungs of popularity to mingle with the populazzi? Enter to win a free, finished copy of Populazzi! Leave me a comment with your name and an email address before Monday, August 22nd. On Tues., August 23rd, I will randomly choose a winner and contact them for their address (must be US/Canada only per publisher, sorry!). Good luck!!!

Full disclosure: review copy received from publisher