All Eyes on Us

June 1, 2019

Gr 9 Up-Seventeen-year-old Amanda Kelly has her whole life planned out. She'll marry her high school sweetheart and town golden boy, Carter Shaw, and all her family's financial troubles will be a thing of the past-even though she knows Carter is cheating on her with Rosalie Bell. For Rosalie, Carter is just a shield to hide her lesbian relationship from her fundamentalist Christian parents, who have tried to "convert" her. All she has to do is keep up the act until she graduates and can get out from under her parents' roof, but the waiting and lying are eating at her soul. Both girls' lives are jeopardized when they start getting texts and demands from an anonymous caller trying to destroy Carter. The two must work together to discover the identity of the mysterious Private Number before something terrible happens. This book touches on several issues, from social climbing to the practice of conversion "therapy." But at its heart, it's a book about finding the strength to stand on one's own without surrendering to others' expectations. The main characters are well defined, and Amanda in particular grows from being initially superficial into a young woman who understands her own self-worth. Ancillary characters blend together and serve little purpose other than widening the suspect pool, but that is a relatively minor issue when so much of the plot revolves around Amanda and Rosalie. This is a solid conversation starter, and an author's note includes information about conversion tactics and resources for survivors. VERDICT A good story and message that could serve teens who need help finding their place.-Erik Knapp, Davis Library, Plano, TX

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2019
Grades 9-12 In Frick's suspenseful thriller, Amanda and Rosalie, teens with nothing in common but their cheating boyfriend, band together to expose a stalker. Amanda is expected to marry well to cement her family's social status in their wealthy neighborhood, and she's invested it all in Carter, heir to his father's real-estate empire. Rosalie needs a boyfriend so that her Christian Fundamentalist parents won't send her back to conversion therapy; she's stringing Carter along and hiding her girlfriend until she turns 18. When the girls receive anonymous texts designed to pit them against each other and Carter, their refusal to give in puts them in danger. Frick successfully conveys the pressure both girls weather to perform for their families; both are complex, well-developed characters with real problems, though Rosalie's plight is more poignant. The reveal of the stalker isn't terribly surprising, but the aftermath, in which the girls gain the confidence to confront their parents, is rewarding. An afterword about the dangers of conversion therapy and a resource list for LGBTQ teens in crisis are included.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from April 15, 2019
Two teens from opposite sides of the tracks have their worlds rocked by a threatening stalker. Frick (See All the Stars, 2018, etc.) returns with an intricate, page-ripping psychological thriller involving dual--at times dueling--white protagonist narrators. Seventeen-year-old Amanda Kelly and Rosalie Bell are classic foils. Upper-class, pretty, straight Amanda is used to being the center of attention, a queen bee and steady girlfriend of Carter Shaw--the blond, athletic senior class president who is heir to his father's real estate empire. By contrast, Rosalie hails from a working-class suburb of Amanda and Carter's posh West Virginia town. She sports a casual style and prefers to keep a low profile ever since her fundamentalist Christian family subjected her to conversion therapy to try to "cure" her lesbian orientation. Frick initially brings the lives of her intriguing first-person narrators together through Carter, who is cheating on Amanda by seeing Rosalie. She is using Carter as a beard to mask her intimate relationship with her girlfriend from her parents. Later, Amanda and Rosalie find their fates intertwining when an anonymous texter threatens physical harm and exposure of their darkest secrets. Though largely plot-driven, Frick's narrative challenges all sorts of social and class conventions, encouraging teens to examine critical assumptions about haves and have-nots and the sacrifices one might be asked to make on the road to self-acceptance. A captivating page-turner enriched by probing social commentary. (Thriller. 15-adult)

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