PANTS ON FIRE

The summer before senior year, Katie Sullivan’s on top of the world, especially with Seth, the football team’s kicker as her boyfriend, a ranking at the top of her class and a place in her school’s popular clique. So what if she had to tell a few white lies to get there? However, when the infamous Tommy Sullivan reappears after four years, much hotter than she remembered, Katie knows she needs a whopper of a lie to disassociate herself from him and to cover up the fact that she can’t stop kissing him. After all it was Tommy, her then best friend, whose investigative reporting brought about the end of Eastport High’s streak of football championship victories, which, in a football-obsessed Eastport, is inexcusable. Katie’s self-centered world-view, which stops at Eastport’s town line, might be frustrating to some, but comes across as realistic and refreshingly honest. Unfortunately, a stereotypical and predictable ending dulls the text’s reality in a forced attempt to redeem Katie. But it’s Cabot, so it won’t matter—buy in bulk. (Fiction. YA)