Poseur »

Rachel Maude grew up in Hollywood, California, where she studied illustration at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. She attended UCLA and received a Masters in Dramatic Writing from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Rachel is already hard at work on her next novel in the Poseur series, so kick off your clogs and burn your scrunchies; all fashion crimes will be noted.

po·seur (noun): a person who pretends to be what he or she is not.





Charlotte Beverwil, Janie Farrish, Melissa Moon, and Petra Greene attend exclusive Winston Prep in the Hollywood Hills. And that's all they have in common. But hang out together? They'd rather be hanged. Borrow one another's clothes? They'd sooner borrow a zit. So when these four sophomores are forced into a class to create their own fashion label, they Clash with a capital C. Janie thinks Melissa and Charlotte are Beverly Hills brats. They dismiss Janie as a Valley rat in sheep's clothing. And Petra, well . . . Petra couldn't care less. Can a cool coquette, a shy punk, a hippie goddess, and a ghettoglam egomaniac make beautiful couture together? At Winston Prep, survival of the fittest comes down to who fits in-and what fits.





Introducing a juicy new series from the publisher of the national bestselling series Gossip Girl, The Clique, The It Girl, and The A-List.





Includes Do-It-Yourself instructions by NYC fashion label Compai and fashion sketches throughout by the author

Publishers Weekly

Maude enthusiastically embraces obvious stereotypes in her debut novel, taking them so far over the top that she delivers a very amusing read. Choosing an exclusive private school in Los Angeles as a backdrop, the author dresses the mega-wealthy youth of Beverly Hills and Bel Air in Dior, Marc Jacobs and Jimmy Choo, and has them roar to school in Porsches and Jaguars, while fish-out-of-water twins Janie and Jake Farrish, scholarship students from the Valley, shop at Goodwill and share ownership of a 16-year-old Volvo. The same gleeful exaggeration applies to Janie's three classmates in a special studies course focusing on fashion design: there's Charlotte, bored after a week of a summer intensive embroidery studies at a convent in Bruges, who arranges a midnight escape by chopper; Melissa, daughter of the rap producer Seedy, who announces, "In the grand tradition of Jennifer Lopez and Oprah, I dream to be more than just a person. I dream to be a brand"; and Petra, the ridiculously beautiful daughter of the most sought-after plastic surgeon in Hollywood, who tendentiously deplores vanity and wants to create an anti-fashion clothing line called Moral Fiber. Though the plot is predictable and the pacing uneven, the novel dishes up outsize amounts of humor, mostly at the expense of Maude's narcissistic characters. Juicy, stylish fun. Ages 13-up. (Jan.)