You know how you act differently if you think a lot of people are watching you, and scrutinizing your actions? Try having the whole country watching you. That’s the case with Charlie. When we first meet her, she’s the ringleader of a group of very tight high school girls. They live in a small town and do small-town stuff. Charlie, for example, works at a coffeehouse called Milk and Sugar. Pretty normal. But there’s a woman who keeps coming in to Milk and Sugar every day, from out of town, asking Charlie a lot of questions, admiring her spirit and personality, and supposedly catching up on some reading. She even wants to meet Charlie’s friends and learn as much as she can about them. There’s Brooke, with red hair and a very direct manner; Hallie, with long curly brown hair, the daughter of local restaurant owners; and Keiran, Charlie’s oldest friend, who is blonde and super pretty and spends a lot of her free time babysitting her younger siblings. The girls are a team, and a very attractive one. The woman, as it turns out, is from the Fire and Ice Network, sort of like MTV, which produces teen reality shows. She offers the girl a contract, with mega-bucks and glamorous parties attached. The show is going to be called “The Cliffs,” after Cliffside, the name of their small beach community town. But there’s a real danger to exposing your private life and your friendships and your feelings to the whole world. Can these close friends stay true to each other and expose themselves to the whole country? Reality Check by Jen Calonita.
Reality Check by Jen Calonita. 277 p. Poppy/Little, Brown: 2010. Booktalk to high school, possibly adults who like chick lit.
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