So sad, and so necessary. I think that all high school students and their parents and teachers and school counselors and administrators should read this as well as the parents of middle school students. The narrator of the story only calls herself "we" because she is just part of the group and in the end, we are all responsible. The narrator describes how a beautiful new girl named Carolyn arrives in town and. because she is beautiful and new, she is accepted into the school and is nominated for the homecoming court. Carolyn doesn't understand that the various cliques at the school are separate and that she can't just go from one to another. She begin's dating the most handsome boy at school, Shane, which makes his now ex-girlfriend hate Carolyn. She joins the swim team where they see scars on her arms. Eventually, Carolyn is bullied and a video of her making out with Shane is posted online. The book shows the attitudes of the students about everything that goes down. "We" didn't really participate in any bullying of Carolyn. Sure, there was that one time, but they changed what we said or perhaps someone else spread that rumor. The book shows how we are all accountable for how we treat others and that being a bystander is also being guilty. We could have done something different if we had known what was going to happen. Perhaps we could have changed things, but it is too late now. The book is just heartbreaking.
This is an interesting first book in a new series. Julia is not a witch, although her mother was drowned as a witch when Julia was 7 years old. However, Julia can hide from other people's sight. She works in the seedier side of town and her current job is to be a maid in a house as she searches for something there, she is not really sure what. There is mystery, action, and magic in this intriguing book!
