Loved the alternating stories throughout the book. Huge of family secrets, financial instabilities, denial, self-image, self-discovery, teenage hormones, and a fashion sense that will drive them crazy! With the alternating stories, you got the insight of all the girl’s thoughts, and how everything played out. Of course all the girls have a connection that is bound to be nothing but true friends.
The story was very well put together, inviting, and you can really see how this could easily be a true life story. My only downfall was some of the characters lacked building, and I would love to known more about them. However, it is definitely worth a read and will recommend to those would love Young Adult. ( )

Justine's fashion sense keeps her on keel. She needs it because her family has just moved again, this time to New Jersey. It's dogged hot, all the kids her age, she's fifteen, are at the beach it seems and her best friend is back in San Francisco. Her forced meeting with Becka, the elegant, but snooty girl living across the street, is an epic disaster, leaving Justine tongue tied, but determined to make a fashion statement with her antique paper dress on the first day of school.
As other kids encounter her that day, their reactions are varied, from cool to ugh! But Justine's so unnerved by her perception that nobody likes her, or the dress, she comes home and shreds it. We are introduced in depth to four other girls she meets that first day in alternating chapters. Becka whose mother is a therapist and has been writing teen oriented psychology books while using her daughter as the supposedly anonymous subject. Ann, who's very small and hates being compared to her 'robotgirl' older sister, but can't tell her mom she's in love with art, because she's supposed to become a lawyer or something similar. Robyn, Becka's best friend, who loves fashion, but has a mother who thinks she's a shopping addict and a law professor dad who is an untreated alcoholic and Polly, daughter of a single mom, because her father supposedly abandoned the family when she was little. Polly's a sweetie and an excellent swimmer who obsesses about what she thinks is an oversized butt that makes it impossible to look good in any outfit.
Told in alternating chapters related to what they wear, what's in their closets and how they gradually become drawn into their own collective universe, sometimes gracefully, often painfully, this is a smart, sometimes funny, very emotional book. It's about family secrets, self-image, teen angst and, ultimately, about how we're a lot more alike than different when we let ourselves really be seen. Both mature tweens and teens, particularly those with a love of fashion or with unspoken family issues will really like this book. ( )