Backlash

An online crush who isn’t what he seems pushes a fragile 15-year-old named Lara to the brink of self-destruction, and her former best friend Bree is there to document her collapse like a Facebook-posting paparazzo. But as the police investigate Lara’s suicide attempt and the town becomes embroiled in the incident, Lara’s tormentors become targets. Working in the same vein as she did in Want to Go Private?, Littman pens a raw, frighteningly realistic, and absorbing look at cyberbullying and the damaging effects of airing private trauma in a public forum. By telling the story from the shifting viewpoints of key characters, Littman honestly examines the conflicting ways people can view a single situation. In passages written in the voice of Lara’s younger sister, Sydney, readers get an unflinching, firsthand account of Sydney’s struggle to cope with feeling like her own aspirations are being ignored, while the real villain, Bree’s unscrupulous mother, emerges as much more than a self-involved woman trying to live out her high school fantasies through her daughter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Mar.)