Pushing Perfect
Michelle Falkoff
Kara is the perfect girl. She wakes up with her perfect face, eats her perfect food, goes to her perfect school and gets prefect grades! Just one problem. She isn’t perfect, and that’s one of her biggest fears, not living up to people’s expectations. Kara always works hard and tries, but when she starts freaking out about her SATs and college prep, she decides to take a step out of the perfect pathway. She discovers an amazing pill which helps her with her panic attacks and makes her feel invincible. She swears to only take it once for her SATs and never again, but when someone catches her buying prescription drugs without a prescription from a fellow high school student, she fears the chances of making Harvard or any other school for that matter are very low. With that one picture, she is controlled by a trickster and becomes one of their minions. She soon discovers that she is not alone and that many have been blackmailed just like her to do things in this evil plot. With the help of her new friends and even some old ones, she tries to unravel the mystery which is bigger than anyone could have expected.
Pushing Perfect is definitely an enjoyable book, boring at times but always able to keep me reaching for the next page. The suspense was amazing, and watching Kara grow out of her comfort zone and go from a brainiac who lost her only friends to a socialite who is always on top of her grades and in control of her life is incredible. Kara has a very relatable personality and I think many teenagers will be able to relate to the pressures that she goes through as a student with high expectations set on her shoulders and not having the reassurance that she is able to live up to them perfectly like everyone thinks.
A lively book with the feelings of pressure into trying new things, sadness and loss of friends that everyone goes through sometimes, regret, love and betrayal form the people you trusted the most. – Fatima S.