LOVELY GIRLS

A teenage girl navigating the high school food chain finds herself at the center of a mystery as either a victim or a potential perp.

For what may be the first time in her life, Kate Turner has made an almost-impulsive choice: to move with her teenage daughter, Alex, from Buffalo to a new home in Shoreham, Florida. Grief does funny things to a person, and Kate hasn’t been sure how to deal with the sudden death of a husband she no longer loved or even really liked. But vacationing in Shoreham was one of Kate’s last happy memories, so here they are. Settling into their new home, Kate makes nice with a clique of moms with daughters at Alex’s school and feels like she may be fitting in, with a potentially closer relationship with chef Joe Miller. Alex has her own struggles, presented in video diary entries interspersed with chapters narrated by Kate. She hasn’t been herself since her dad’s death in a car accident when she was driving, and her biggest relief is her longtime love of tennis. But the Shoreham Lady Panthers are unwelcoming despite Alex’s solid skills. Though Kate is friendly with the mothers of the team’s members, the girls are queen bees who ignore Alex at best or take note of her simply to bully her. Alex wants to keep her head down but can’t help but goad Daphne, who’s at the top of the food chain. Wrong move by Alex, whose sense of principle supersedes self-preservation. A death introduced early in the book is clearly linked to the bullying, and it seems only a matter of time before Alex is either offed or held responsible when someone else is.

What happens when mean girls are raised by tiger mothers.