Pretty Girl County

Former friends must navigate class dynamics and economic divides to help each other accomplish their goals in this knockout novel by Wilson (Last Chance Dance). Reya Samuels and Sommer Watkins were BFFs until Reya’s mother came into money and moved the Samuels family from Seat Pleasant, Md., to a more affluent Prince George’s County neighborhood. Now 18, the girls haven’t spoken in five years despite attending the same school. Sommer assists her father at his bookstore and works to save for college while Reya packs her schedule with extracurricular activities, hoping to impress administrators at the Fashion Institute of Technology into accepting her off the admission waiting list. When Reya struggles to put together a school fashion show, she recruits Sommer to design the clothes. In exchange, Reya offers to pay Sommer and help at the bookstore. Their partnership forces them to confront past hurts and feelings of abandonment; meanwhile, romance blossoms in the background for both girls. Using Reya’s and Sommer’s lively alternating POVs, Wilson highlights topics of financial inequity, privilege, and community and their effects on the girls and their relationships in a powerful tale of first love and second-chance friendship. Main characters are Black. Ages 12–up. (July)