Synopsis
Phoebe Avery has always been a lucky girl.
Popular, smart, and beautiful, Phoebe has it all. She's even planning the hottest party ever with her four best friends to celebrate their middle school graduation. With the perfect green dress picked out at Neiman Marcus and half her class clamoring for invites, plus a new guy to crush on, Phoebe could not be in a better mood—until it looks like the party might be over before it can even start.
When Phoebe's family is suddenly faced with losing it all, she discovers that there is more at risk than just her designer jeans. In a town where gossip rules, Phoebe needs to keep everything a secret, or she may lose her friends too. Can lucky Phoebe really be out of luck?
Publishers Weekly
Vail (You, Maybe) again demonstrates a penetrating insight into the concerns of young teen girls, this time upending the conventions of the rich-girl novel. In the first of a trilogy about three sisters, 14-year-old Phoebe, the appealing narrator, and her two older siblings have been coached to view themselves and their über-successful investor mother as Valkyries ("Nobody-nothing-can intimidate us. We will never back down; we will never surrender," their mother tells them over breakfast). Less a Valkyrie than a people-pleaser, Phoebe has joined her best friends to plan a lavish eighth-grade graduation party, for which Phoebe has picked out a Vera Wang gown. But when her mother gets fired abruptly for what could be shady dealings, Phoebe is forced to think about money for the first time, and to wonder how much effect it has on her friendships and popularity. Vail gets the relationships exactly right, from the shifting twosomes among the sisters to the changing attitudes among the eighth-grade friends and their parents, and most especially, the shifts in behavior within her protagonist. Readers will absorb this in one fell swoop. Ages 12-up. (May)
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