Girl Wonder ~ Alexa Martin

As if transferring senior year weren't hard enough, Charlotte Locke has been bumped to lower level classes at her new school. With no friends, a terrible math SAT score, and looming college application deadlines, the future is starting to seem like an oncoming train for which she has no ticket.
Then Amanda enters her orbit like a hot-pink meteor, offering Charlotte a ticket to something else: popularity. Amanda is fearless, beautiful, brilliant, and rich. As her new side kick, Charlotte is brought into the elite clique of the debate team—and closer to Neal, Amanda's equally brilliant friend and the most perfect boy Charlotte has ever seen.
But just when senior year is looking up, Charlotte’s life starts to crumble. The more things heat up between Charlotte and Neal, the more Neal wants to hide their relationship. Is he ashamed? Meanwhile, Amanda is starting to act strangely competitive, and she's keeping a secret Charlotte doesn't want to know. {from book cover}

I’m not sure exactly what it was about this book, but whenever I read the summary of it for some reason I pictured it as being a lower YA, light read. Whoa, was I wrong. Like, completely and totally wrong. Charlotte’s new life in Seattle is filled with drama – there’s nothing light about it.
The story started out a little slow for me, beginning with a story of a ten-year-old Charlotte and her best friend, playing pretend at school, on the day she’s informed she has a learning disability. It wasn’t the most captivating beginning. But once the present-day, "Charlotte Starts Her Senior Year In A Scary New School" story started, I started to settle into the story. From the beginning, it’s obvious that Charlotte, as one character tells her, prefers beauty over substance. She’s quick to judge people based on her impressions of them based on little more than their looks, so of course she’s immediately taken in by “Girl Wonder” Amanda. Soon she’s fully submerged in the murky waters of Amanda’s world, which includes getting face time with her crush Neal.
This was a stressful read for me, as most stories of this nature tend to be. I hate to see a relatively nice (if somewhat superficial) girl get screwed over by people she’s so desperate to impress. This is mostly because I don’t usually find those people all that worthy of trying to impress in the first place. But Charlotte’s dealing with a lot in her life, with academic issues and family issues mounting, so of course she’s going to do what she can to keep the attention of the people she worked so hard to get. It’s painful to watch her as she spirals into a girl she doesn’t even recognize.
My favorite character, by far, is Charlotte’s younger brother. He’s kind of a genius, which she hates, but he’s the perfect character to bring some lighter moments into the story. Their relationship is typical of the sibling relationship in that they both hate and love each other (maybe Charlotte shows a bit more of the hate side than James Henry).
While I won’t say this is my favorite book that deals with the idea of trying to fit in and being betrayed in the process, the emotions it evokes are very real and very powerful.

Published: 2011 by Hyperion
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher / NetGalley