I’m back on the Lisi Harrison train. I mean I always loved her Clique books but it’s about time for me to get into her other YA works so here goes.

The Pretenders is all about exposing the duck paddling. You know, the study about one of the Ivies that said that all the students are like ducks. They seem to be serenly sailing through life with their amazing GPAs and genius-level intellect and talent and thousands of curriculars. But under that, under the water the feet are paddling desperately to stay afloat.

That’s what it’s like for the students at Noble High, NJ. Supposedly the Ivy League of high schools. With its high academic exellence, students have gone on to more Ivy Leagues, CEOs, talent scouts, you get the idea. These kids compete over achievement rather than popularity.
And in Noble High, the kidss most destined for success are the Pheonix Five. Five freshmen who are picked every year to represent the best of the best and go on to do great things.

Well these books are the journals kept by 2012-2013 Pheonix Five exposing all their flaws, insecurities and failures. Journals stolen and released by one of their own to expose the intense pressures students are under and the illusion they maintained to hide it.

There’s Sheriden, drama queen extraordinaire who tries on a different persona a day depending on what goal she wants to achieve. Too bad it’s not keeping her from losing her best friend to a scene stealer, get her crush or get her the lead.

Vanessa who is Type A to the extreme and is convinced that her perfect A+ grades and 159 trophies are the only things that is keeping her parents from an inevitable divorce. Then add in the scary smart new girl with the most handsome guy friend that Vanessa has a crush on. You can imagine the lengths with a girl on the edge of a breakdown to maintain her As.

Lily, the scary smart new girl was homeschooled for most of her life by genius parents so high school homework is a breeze. It’s the social life that is killing her as she makes misstep after misstep trying to make friends and get her crush/next door neighbor, Andrew to like her.

Andrew, the said neighbor, doesn’t notice Lily. He’s busy trying to drum up money so he can stay on the varsity basketball team and not let it slip that his parents’ are losing their car dealership business. The only way to get quick cash is to work as a teen model for the world’s most ridiculous Eurotrash outfits and convince his classmates to buy them.

Finally, there’s Jagger. The mysterious new kid who’s an emacipated teenager living in the back of a pet shop since his parents are on death row.

This was just a fun book with good intentions about the immense pressures we put on ourselves. Each POV is quite distinct though sometimes Andrew’s was annoying because it is so teenage boy it hurts.

Lily and Sheridan’s POVs were the most funny. It’s actually quite embarassing to see how badly Lily misreads all the situations but what can you except from a homeschooled kid. Sheridan was a crack up as she channels her inner celebrity and fictional characters too.

In fact, Harrison got to go meta with that by bringing back Massie Block as Sheriden channels her for disasterous results. Proving once and for all that being Massie Block is so not the way to win friends, influence people or be popular in real life.

Harrison also mentions Monster High‘s Goulia and How to Rock‘s Samantha Boscarino. Both are series where she worked on tie-in books. Very clever. I see what she did.

Unfortunately the books ended with a cliffhanger, promising more but as it has been 9 years, I don’t think it will happen leaving me with endless musings of whether their problems will get resolved and the ensuing aftermath of all these exposed journals.

So if you’re okay with that, then go for The Pretenders. I read both of them in one day, you just zoom through trying to see what happens next.