Review: Mostly Good Girls by Leila Sales

Title: Mostly Good Girls
Author: Leila Sales
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: October 5, 2010
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Source: Won

The higher you aim, the farther you fall….

It’s Violet’s junior year at the Westfield School. She thought she’d be focusing on getting straight As, editing the lit mag, and figuring out how to talk to boys without choking on her own saliva. Instead, she’s just trying to hold it together in the face of cutthroat academics, her crush’s new girlfriend, and the sense that things are going irreversibly wrong with her best friend, Katie.

When Katie starts making choices that Violet can’t even begin to fathom, Violet has no idea how to set things right between them. Westfield girls are trained for success—but how can Violet keep her junior year from being one huge, epic failure?

This book is delightfully fun and funny. The writing is good and the characters feel true to life and believable. Violet and Katie remind me so much of my best friend and myself in highschool. They are silly and hold witty and amusing conversations that had me laughing out loud on several occasions and earning me some strange looks from the people around me. They get into a little bit of trouble but really are, as the title says, mostly good. I love that the characters feel so natural and real. All of my best friends have been girls just like these. They are realistic and lovable, and the characterization is done really well.

My one complaint would be that the plot doesn't really go anywhere. It is a cute and fun story, and I enjoyed it, but there just isn't really that much happening in it. There is some minor conflict between Violet and Katie and there are some shenanigans, but mostly it's just teenage girls being teenage girls. While the conflict isn't very prominent, it is realistic, so I could still appreciate it for what it is - a good example of mildish everyday type of issues that can arise between friends as they grow up.

Overall, I like Mostly Good Girls despite its gently sloping story arc, and a bit because of it. I enjoyed it as a true to life story that could have been an excerpt from probably most people's highschool experiences. The humor is entertaining without being over the top. It felt like reminiscing, and it left me feeling the kind of happy that you feel after you've had a good, long laugh with friends.