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Reviews and random thoughts on children's and teen fiction.
1. Review: Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer

Smart Girls Get What They Want. by Sarah Strohmeyer. 2012. Blazer + Bray. 348 pages. ISBN: 9780061953408

Gigi and her best friends Bea and Neerja, have always been very smart and very academic. Their idol is Neerja's sister, Parad, who has begun attending Princeton at the start of the girls' own sophomore year in high school. There is only one problem with Parad - no one from her high school class seems to know that she existed. Gigi and her friends definitely don't want the same fate to befall them, so they decide to change things up this year by simply doing things instead of overthinking them first. Gigi will run for student school board representative, Bea will return to skiing, and Neerja will try out for the school play. Though none of the girls' new paths are easy ones, through their new experiences, they find that being smart can definitely bring them more benefits than just good grades.

The premise of this book seemed a bit shaky to me at first, but once I got into the story, I realized that the title and description from the book jacket really didn't do it justice. This is not the story of three smart girls who get angry at being ignored by the general population and vow to get revenge. It's also not the story of three smart girls who suddenly give up being smart in order to fit in with everyone else. Rather, this is the story of three smart girls who begin to see themselves as more than nerdy bookworms and begin to explore the other facets of their well-rounded personalities. Gigi learns that she is not necessarily smarter than everyone else, and that others of her classmates also have hidden smarts. Neerja discovers that the boy of her dreams might not be the one she suspected, and that her acting skills might be better developed than she could imagine. And Bea is finally able to stand up to her parents and re-discover the sport she loves that they have forbidden her to participate in for years. These smart girls don't just get what they want; they become who they truly are by letting go and looking around at what they can offer their school community besides the answers to tests.

The writing style in this book is similar to most other contemporary realistic fiction novels for teen girls. It specifically reminded me of The Darlings Are Forever by Melissa Kantor, in which three ninth graders attend separate schools for the first time, and Meant to Be by Lauren Morrill, in which an honors student learns to see the positive qualities in the obnoxious boy who is her assigned partner on a school trip to Europe. Readers in grades 7-10 who are themselves honors students will relate to many of the girls' experiences with teachers, boys, and homework, and if they haven't yet found their non-academic niches, they might be inspired to do so by this book.

I borrowed Smart Girls Get What They Want from my local public library. 

For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat.

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