New Girl by Paige Harbison

Being the new girl sucks. Being the new girl at a boarding school senior year? It's horrible. Plus the fact that she took the place of another girl who went missing the previous year didn't make for a very good start to this huge change in life.

But she didn't want to disappoint her parents - they've been sending applications every year until she finally got in.

Now that she's at Manderley Academy, though, the thought of going back to FL where everything is familiar and normal is very tempting. But she's sticking it out for the year - what could possibly go wrong?

Well, one, the roommate, Dana, hates her on sight. Dana used to be roommates with Becca, the very popular, very pretty girl who disappeared right before the previous year.

Two, everyone at this preppy school thinks that she wants to be Becca. They have the same hair color, the same room, so of course she wants to be like the one person at the school that she hasn't met.

And three, no one - NO ONE - calls her by her name. They all think of her as "the new girl" and for some reason that's the only thing she's been associated by.

Finally, Max Holloway. He makes her feel all sorts of feelings. The problem? Max is Becca's boyfriend - well before she disappeared. So now she has to stay away from Max because everyone will think that she wants to be Becca even more.

But no one knows the drama that happened between Becca, Max, and Max's best friend Johnny. Not even Max and Johnny. Only Becca, and she's not around to tell it.

So now she has to take the consequences of Becca leaving and make her parents happy, while also trying to fight her attraction toward Max, which is a little difficult because it seems that Max might like her as well.

What will the new girl do? Can things get to a point where she might get her own identity, or will this whole senior just be a time where she wished never happened? Read New Girl by Paige Harbison to find out!

My Thoughts/Reflections
Goodreads recommended this book to me so I thought I would try it. It was alright, not the best thing I've read, but there were some things that really interested me.

First, the way everyone acted around Becca. I think everyone at Manderley Academy was very boring before Becca came, because they treated her like a celebrity. She made the party a party and everyone loved her for it, even though they never knew the real Becca.

Secondly, this is told through first person, so the main girl, the new girl? We only see her name once in the book, at the very end. Because it was told through first person, I never realized that no one called her by her name - not once. When I read her name, I was startled and had to remember hard if I had seen it throughout the book, but I hadn't. The reader basically generalizes the girl as the new girl because that's what the author wanted us to do.

And lastly, this was told by Becca and new girl's point of view, giving the reader a chance to see how the previous year was when Becca was the new girl. Both girls are very different from one another, yet there is something there that makes them unforgettable for the students at Manderley Academy.

So this book was okay. There were points where I rolled my eyes or thought it was annoying, but I think the storyline was really good and the author did a great job depicting new students coming into a shadow of a celebrity figure.

For anyone who wants a mystery plot line while also reading about a strong willed female character, I would recommend this to you!