The Accidental Bad Girl

By: Maxine Kaplan

Narrated by: Julia Knippen

After getting caught hooking up with her best friend’s ex on the last day of junior year, Kendall starts senior year friendless and ostracized. She plans to keep her head down until she graduates. But after discovering her online identity has been hacked and she’s being framed for stealing from a dealer, Kendall is drawn into a tenuous partnership with the mastermind of a drug ring lurking in the shadows of her Brooklyn private school.

If she wants to repair her tattered reputation and save her neck, she’ll have to decide who she really is - and own it. The longer she plays the role of “bad girl”, the more she becomes her new reputation. Friends and enemies, detectives and drug dealers - no one is who they appear to be. Least of all Kendall.

©2018 Maxine Kaplan (P)2018 Amulet Books

Inspiring

This book really takes off about halfway through, as the young protagonist starts coming into her own. She shakes off the cobwebs of social expectations and naïveté, and she takes control of her own life on the cusp of adulthood. Kaplan sorts through timely, thorny issues around sexuality and rape culture with a light but nuanced touch. A great reading of a great book!