Geek Magnet » (Reprint)

Kieran Scott lives in Westwood, New Jersey.

Everybody loves KJ. Especially the geeks. See, KJ Miller is super nice, smart, pretty, the stage manager of her high school’s spring musical . . . and a total geek magnet. She’s like the geek pied piper of Washington High, drawing every socially clueless guy in a five-mile radius. If only Cameron, the hottest guy in school, would follow her around and worship her the way her entourage of dorks do. Enter Tama Gold, queen of the popular crowd, and solution to all of KJ’s problems. KJ is too nice, and the nice girl never gets the guy. Tama’s ready to help KJ get cruel, ditch the dorks, and win Cameron’s heart. But is KJ?

Publishers Weekly

On the surface, Scott's (ANon-Blonde Cheerleader in Love, also due this month) novel sounds familiar: smart good-girl KJ is too decent to brush off the socially inept or "unsavory guys" who glom onto her, even though they make it hard for KJ's crush, basketball star Cameron Richardson, to notice her. But when she takes up the job of stage manager for the school's production of Grease, popular Tama, playing the lead role of Sandy, gives KJ some strategic advice: tell the losers to get lost, and go for the guy she wants-and Tama even offers to talk up KJ to her buddy Cameron. Scott shores up this obvious plot in several ways. First, she frames the novel in five "acts," lightly inviting readers to measure her characters against the good/bad stereotypes poked at in Grease. More substantially, she gives KJ an alcoholic father, supplying an insightful foundation for KJ's personality and grounding her story realistically. The result: a genuinely moving heroine and a far stronger story than the cliché-ridden cover art would suggest. Ages 12-up. (May)

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