Folded Notes from High School

January 29, 2018
The year is 1991, when teens didn’t communicate through texts but through handwritten notes stuffed into lockers, desks, and mailboxes. In a novel that captures the lingo, fads, and teenage preoccupations of the period, actor and TV writer Boren makes a charismatic debut as he traces the ups and downs of Tara Maureen Murphy’s life through notes exchanged between friends and enemies. Although Tara is dying to get out of her “two-bit town” and study acting at NYU, she intends to enjoy her senior year, getting star roles in the school’s plays, being half of a “supercouple” with her hockey-player boyfriend, and reuniting with her best friend, who has been away for the summer. Things don’t go as she expects. Tara’s year is full of drama, but most of it occurs outside the theater. A brash, egotistical heroine determined to get what she wants at any cost, Tara suffers setbacks at every turn. Even if she doesn’t win readers’ hearts, she will make them smile with her conniving antics, sarcastic wit, and tremendous resiliency. Ages 12–up.

February 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Tara is beautiful, talented, and popular. She only dates the hottest guys at school, and her best friends are the kinds of girls who get voted Best Dressed and Most Likely to Succeed. She is up for the lead in all of the school plays. She is also benevolent when it suits her, but is just as likely to crush a classmate if crossed. In other words, Tara is a mean girl; talented and driven but selfish and manipulative, too, and she's desperate for her senior year to be perfect. But in this narrative, the leading lady's supporting cast stops playing their parts. Tara's hot, hockey-playing boyfriend gets caught cheating, her best friend finds a new gal pal, and the freshman she takes under her wing finds his own way into the inner circle. Set during the pre-cell phone 1991-1992 school year and told via a series of intricately folded notes passed through the school day, stuffed into lockers, and snuck into backpacks, this tale about Tara's over-the-top rise and demise has a playful retro pop culture context. A found letter, sent from Tara to Matt, the freshman upstart, after she has left for college, promises a continuation of the series. VERDICT A campy romp through early 90s culture and slang. Like early-season Rachel on the TV show Glee, readers will love to hate the talented and terrible Tara.-Jennifer Miskec, Longwood University, Farmville, VA

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2018
The labyrinthine social lives of 1990s high school students unfurl as they write and exchange notes.Tara plans on netting the role of Sandy in the school's production of Grease. But when a new ninth-grader named Matt lands the male lead of Danny while Tara is passed over for her coveted role, the ball is set in motion for a year of offstage drama. Told entirely in epistolary format as notes passed back and forth between characters, all of whom seem to be white, this debut novel effectively captures the voice of insecure, duplicitous Tara, whose penchant for cutesy phrases and colloquial writing style are juxtaposed against her poisonous angling in both her romantic relationships and friendships as well as her pointed, cruel othering of her Jewish theater rival, Joy. While the portrayal of the 1990s suburban New England experience is accurate, replete with mainstream cultural references of the time, it's uncertain whether these will be of any interest to today's teens. Equally questionable is whether readers will connect with a protagonist so absorbed with the relentless ping-pong machinations of her peer dynamics that she imagines herself a latter-day Anne Frank.Steeped in nostalgia, this exhausting novel might have been better geared for adults. (Fiction. 14-18)

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March 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 In the age before Snapchat and Instagram, Tara Murphy rules South High's social scene armed with only her pen and strategically hidden notes. By senior year, she has attained everything she wanted?a popular boyfriend, big-city college prospects, and a ruthlessly groomed reputation. This changes when freshman Matt Bloom upsets her delicately constructed hierarchy by winning the lead in South High's production of Grease. What follows is a manipulative game to exert control over Matt?along with everyone else, friend and enemy alike. Written entirely in notes passed between students, this '90s-era epistolary novel starts out light and fluffy. It grows darker, however, as Tara's megalomania increases. Through multiple points of view, Boren slowly unveils the social fabric of South High, leaving subtle clues about events that happen off the page. The structure succeeds admirably at creating a narrative that is funny and disturbing. There are references to characters having sex, though nothing graphic is depicted. This is a great read for slightly older teens who want a glimpse into the increasingly distant?though not so different?�past.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2019
In 1991, Tara Maureen Murphy enters senior year with high expectations: lead in the school musical, a spectacular prom, continued social dominance as half of a "Supercouple." When things don't fall into perfect place, this mean-girl antihero turns to manipulations and lies. Told via passed folded notes, this multi-voiced epistolary novel is an entertaining time capsule of the early 1990s--"you know what I mean?"

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)