A Tale of Two Besties: A Hello Giggles Novel

Gr 7–10—The satisfactory story of two besties charts the emotional ups and downs of freshman year of high school, with a heavy-handed dose of consumer label name dropping. Together since fourth grade, Lily and Harper are BFFs who begin their freshman year in different schools. Lily has always been the outsider and Harper the popular one. When the year begins, their roles are reversed and each has difficulty navigating their changed status. Always unique, Lily wears fairy wings and marches to the beat of her own drum. At her new creative school, she immediately hits it off with the in-crowd, becoming a fashion trendsetter. Harper, usually the quintessential popular California girl, starts off her freshman year with detention and soon after becomes the star of an embarrassing viral video. At a time when the two girls need each other the most, they just can't connect. There are touching moments, and the dialogue feels genuine. However, secondary characters, with the notable exception of Lily's former and Harper's current love interest Tim, seem mostly two-dimensional, created to represent an archetype. Only the two best friends are fully formed. This creates a problem because the bulk of the action takes place when the two main characters are separated. As in most light friendship stories, the friends are somewhat unrealistically reunited in the end.