Book excerpt: Meet Sadie MacPhearson. She’s seventeen and lives in a ritzy, artsy beach town called Mariposa Beach, California. Blond, bootylicious and beautiful—she’s a main chick of the Pop Crowd: the most flawless looking, smartest, trendiest, richest, fabulous group of party animals at Mariposa Beach High School. She wants one thing, to keep her secret but it’s always lingering above her head. When the administrators want to assess her for a learning disability, she coats inhibitions and fears with alcohol, which, in turn, causes serious damage in her life, mostly her chameleon soul.

After struggling to blend in, senior year, Sadie finds herself without her dear grandmother, with disgusted parents, three hundred and sixty mandatory volunteer hours and AA meetings, no driver’s license or Jeep, zero friends, and cognitively low classes. Feeling like success is not an option with her learning disability, she sits behind building C next to an overweight, military loving, book nerd Jay Felix on the first day of senior year. He pushes her to be her best self. But even at her best, can Sadie overcome her learning disability, her struggles with alcohol and graduate from high school at the cutthroat Mariposa Beach High School or will the lure of the Pop Crowd take her down?