The Pages Between Us

Gr 4–6—Besties Olivia and Piper have spent a great deal of their 11 years together, and now it's time to tag team middle school. The girls pass a notebook back and forth to stay connected when their daily face time is limited to one measly French class. They fill the pages with notes, text message printouts, a classmate's blog posts, gratitude lists, and other keepsakes for posterity. When Piper's parents promise her a birthday party with 12 friends, the girls admit they must branch out in order to populate a gathering filled with enough drama to rival Piper's favorite soap opera. They capitalize on an eclectic list of school club offerings to expand their duo, in a quest that will determine whether differing interests lead to different friends. A cousin to Rachel Renée Russell's "Dork Diaries" (S. & S.) and the like, this is a gentler version of middle school, as the girls support each other through familiar trials such as overcoming shyness, making new friends, dealing with lunchroom anxiety, and coping with crushes. While the sweet protagonists may be refreshing to some, the book lacks the drama that makes other chronicle-style tales so popular, until the action picks up near the very end. The main characters' lengthy notes often contain too much backstory to be believable correspondence between two best friends, and the secondary characters disappointingly lack diversity.