Just Another Girl

Hope and Parker aren’t friends and never will be—each girl has something the other wants. Hope is eager for her best friend Brady (Parker’s current boyfriend) to see her as more than a friend, and Parker longs for Hope’s uncomplicated life. Because of these mutual jealousies, the girls have never bothered to really get to know each other, until Hope’s mother hires Parker to tutor Hope. Eulberg (We Can Work It Out) tells this story through the two teens’ alternating perspectives, and each storyline involves a countdown: Hope’s story follows her path to a Rube Goldberg machine competition in Cleveland with Brady, while Parker is counting the days until graduation, when she can finally leave town and start her life anew. Though the story is engaging and Parker’s personal history deeply troubling, the focus on the girls’ petty jealousies and general misconceptions of each other starts to become repetitive. Eulberg touches on difficult subjects that include child abandonment, alcoholism, and embezzlement, but doesn’t really dig into them. Ages 14–up. Agent: Erin Malone, William Morris Endeavor. (Mar.)