Populazzi by Elise Allen (ARC)

TITLE: Populazzi

AUTHOR: Elise Allen

PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

RELEASE DATE: 8/1/2011

PAGES: 400

MY RATING: 3/5

GOODREADS SUMMARY: Cara has always dreamed of being a Populazzi, one of the popular crowd. But it’s not until she changes schools that she gets a shot at it, thanks to her best friend Claudia’s crazy plan. The idea is simple: The rungs of The Ladder are relationships. First get a boyfriend who's ranked low, then climb up through more boyfriends until you're not just one of the Populazzi, but the Supreme Populazzi. Yet what starts off as a fairy tale turns into a somewhat dark comedy of errors. Just when Cara reaches the top, her life hits rock bottom. She wonders why she wanted to be popular in the first place—and if there’s any way to live happily ever after now.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: This was a cute fun read. We've all gone through high school so we all know what it's like wanting to be liked by other people and to have lots of friends. The book made me want to keep reading to see whether or not Cara would fit in with the crowd she desperately wanted attention from.

CHARACTERS: I liked the main character, Cara. There were some parts of the book where she wasn't the greatest most selfless person, but she is in high school and she is worried about fitting in with the popular crowd, which is something that I think is pretty common. The two characters that I did not like at all were Cara's mother and Cara's stepfather. I feel that they were way too harsh on her and it was completely out of line the way that they treated her. We all make mistakes, but the way that Karl (Cara's stepfather) handled the punishment was totally unacceptable. My favorite character was Archer. He was just all around a great guy.

COVER: The cover is cute. I love all of the bright colors and the girl on it looks the way I would imagine Cara to look.

*I recieved a copy of this book from netgalley.