Review: Girl Wonder - Alexa Martin

I received Girl Wonder by Alexa Martin from netgalley courtesy of Hyperion.

As if transferring senior year weren't hard enough, Charlotte Locke has been bumped to lower level classes at her new school. With no friends, a terrible math SAT score, and looming college application deadlines, the future is starting to seem like an oncoming train for which she has no ticket.

Then Amanda enters her orbit like a hot-pink meteor, offering Charlotte a ticket to something else: popularity. Amanda is fearless, beautiful, brilliant, and rich. As her new side kick, Charlotte is brought into the elite clique of the debate team—and closer to Neal, Amanda's equally brilliant friend and the most perfect boy Charlotte has ever seen.

But just when senior year is looking up, Charlotte’s life starts to crumble. The more things heat up between Charlotte and Neal, the more Neal wants to hide their relationship. Is he ashamed? Meanwhile, Amanda is starting to act strangely competitive, and she's keeping a secret Charlotte doesn't want to know.

Our main character Charlotte finds herself having to start over at a brand new school, her parents are focused on her getting into a good college but Charlotte has a learning disability relating to math and is struggling to fit in. In an attempt to do this she finds herself doing some pretty out of character things to secure the friendship of Girl Wonder Amanda and the affections of popular guy Neal.

From the beginning it was pretty obvious to me that Amanda and Neal were shady but it was up to Charlotte to figure out this for herself and learn a little in the process.

One of the things Charlotte got involved with was drugs. I didn't really like the drug stuff I actually find any sort of drug taking pretty hard to take. For some reason it makes me feel physically sick when I read about it or see it on the TV and in movies. So that part of the book was pretty uncomfortable but I did appreciate that it was Charlotte's way of trying to keep her new friends and eventually became the reason for her to change.

I admired Charlotte for being able to pull herself out of the mess she had made, she eventually realised where she had been going wrong and with a little help managed to turn it around. Charlotte and Milton, her neighbour, were so cute towards the end of the book this relationship made all the bad in the beginning worthwhile. Charlotte's little brother John Henry also turned out to be a great character too.

I loved the epilogue at the end, I always seem to be a fan of the epilogues. It came in form of a list, it didn't overload you with information but gave you enough to know things ended well. I'm looking forward to seeing what this author writes next.

That's all for now.