LITTLE BLACK LIES

At 16, Sara Black should know that telling one lie leads to another, but when she transfers from the boondocks to Boston’s exclusive Anton High School, she finds herself spinning more lies than she would ever have imagined to conceal her true identity. At the heart of Sarah’s lies is her father’s job as Anton’s newest janitor, which to Anton’s elite—Ants—is unthinkable, especially Carling, the school’s popular but evil beauty, who has more than her fair share of secrets. Determined to protect herself, Sarah predictably fabricates a glamorous life that eventually comes unraveled. The text escapes tedium, however, as Cohen expertly interweaves Sarah’s father’s battle with OCD and its interconnected ties with her mother’s infidelity and heartbreaking desertion of her family. Thoughtful and intense, this text is truly about families and the havoc that illness can wreak. (Fiction. YA)