Wow, this book is really intense. It's told from the perspective of three different girls who don't really know each other, but they all go to the same really big high school (3500 students). The story is told directly from the characters' streams of consciousness. You feel like you are directly in their brains, whether you like it or not. It moves really fast, and their thoughts are so completely different that at first it's hard to tell what is going on - but that quickness and disorientation are part of what makes you want to keep reading. It's really stressful to read because of all the building tension, but it was a really good book. Definitely a good one to make your friends read, because it makes you want to have someone to talk about it with. ( )

diverse middlegrade fiction (middleschool can be rough)
I liked this okay (diverse voices!) but had trouble getting into it with all the serious stuff going on lately. ( )

Dominique is a brooding, hard-core basketballer with a highly defined sense of her personal space (in other words, don't get up in her space). Trina is flirtaciousness and light, oblivious to all but the beauty she brings to the world. Leticia is an onlooker from the sidelines, eager to see the show, any show. Leticia is the one who sees Trina unwittingly cross Dominique's personal space, sees the look that crosses Dominique's face and Leticia knows It's On for after school. Readers see in alternating narratives who these girls are over the course of a school day, to the inevitable beat-down at 2:45 dismissal. In the end, nobody learns a lesson, no one suffers a crisis of conscience, no one has regrets. (Leticia is stunned to realize she could have been on the news talking about the fight but she isn't!) Teenagers can be obliviously self-centered and this book addresses it perfectly. The luxury here is that readers have the ability to see three perspectives going on. This would make a great teen book group title, generating lively discussion. ( )

Trina: beautiful, bouncy, artistic, thinks of herself as the center of attention; Dominique: tomboy, fixated on playing basketball, bad tempered, extra angry at being benched for low grades; Leticia: daddy's little girl, self-centered, wants to observe, not be involved. Williams-Garcia combines these three personalities in telling about a day in their high school lives from each of their points of view. Angry at being benched, Dominique decides she's going to beat up Trina after school. Clueless to it all, Trina goes through her day. Leticia knows what's going to happen, but debates whether or not she should get involved. Williams-Garcia puts up a convincing case of showing what happens when someone decides not to do the right thing, when someone lets anger control their lives, and when someone is too self-absorbed to notice the world around them. ( )

Three girls: the "bully," the "victim," and the bystander. Three lives, filled with their own stories, stresses, needs, and wants, collide one day in an overcrowded urban high school with the kind of result that makes the news nearly every day. Williams-Garcia nailed this story in 168 pages that makes it a perfect pick for high school girls who are reluctant readers. I think as a group read it could spawn great discussions about responsibility and culpability. ( )