Review Detail

For an inside girl, Flan Flood is remarkably even-headed and not at all prima-donna. Her older brother and sister are famous for throwing out-of-control parties and hanging with celebrities&heck, they are celebrities in their own right. Her parents are rich and not very involved with their kids, jet-setting all over the world. Flan has grown up attending the parties of the rich and famous and going to school with the self-absorbed and fatuous.

Shes had enough and decides to ditch private school for public school (Stuyvesant High School, a well-known public school in New York). She really wants to start fresh. When the first people she meets at her new school dont seem to realize who she is (no fawning or gushing when she mentions the Flood name), she decides to try and keep her a-lister home life completely separate from her new regular life.

At first, things seem to be going pretty good. Shes got two good girl friends and even a sophomore boy (the second-cutest in the grade) interested in her. Shes been invited to parties and even kisses the new hottie in her life.

But, of course, things arent that simple. She cant have anyone over to her house because shes got her best friend Sara-Beth Benny (who happens to be a famous 17-year-old emancipated minor actress) crashing with her and avoiding the paparazzi&and soon two other house guests (or is it house crashers?): Liesel, an It girl socialite hiding out from a creepy artist, and Philippa, another glam socialite avoiding her parents over a boy.

Things start to get a little crazy as time goes on and it seems inevitable that Flans two worlds will eventually collide. Will she survive the big bang thats bound to occur? Will she be able to keep both her regular and her a-lister friendships intact?

For a girl who has grown up in a way that most of us only dream about, Flan is very likable and normal. In other words, shes no Paris Hilton and definitely not a Gossip Girl. Shes a nice girl and it is easy to see how she gets tangled up in the web of white lies and omissions that she spins she doesnt mean to do it, but shes afraid of losing the people that she cares about. Messages of acceptance and trust make this an atypical society girl novel. Recommended for readers aged 12 and up.