Confessions of a Hater by Caprice Crane

As Hailey Harper is packing for move from New York to California, she comes across her older, popular sister's diary entitled, "How to Be a Hater."  Hailey uses her sister's tips to give herself a makeover as she enters her new high school, only to discover she has no interest in being friends with the popular kids.  As she forms real friendships with other girls who are usually invisible, Hailey decides to use her sister's diary to beat the popular girls at their own game.

It was a way less good version of Mean Girls.  Instead of mean girls we call them "haters."  To teens actually use the term "haters?"  I felt the "teen" language was very forced in this book.  Maybe it's actually spot on, but from what I've overheard of girls talking to each other in class, I would say this book sounded, well, like an adult trying to make her characters sound like cool teenagers.  And it was a little painful.

So yes, Hailey loses weight and gets a new wardrobe and decides to be confident and is immediately taken under the wing of the most popular clique in school, lead by queen bee Skyler.  Hailey then realizes these girls are total bitches and doesn't want to hang out with them, so she goes and finds her own friends.  But now she's a target for the mean girls.  I mean, the haters.  She makes some friends and then they decided they will fight back against the haters, using Hailey's sister, Noel's diary as a guidebook.

It was too much of everything.  Every possible teenage cliche was thrown in here, and it was just too much.  We have Hailey's new best friend Anya who got pregnant last year.  We have another girl who shoplifts.  We have teen Adderall snorting.  We have parent's having an affair.  We have dating the boy who use to date the popular girl.  We have awkward first blow-job moments.  We have friends cheating with another friend's boyfriend.  Are we missing anything?  And out of all the drama that was happening, the only one that kind of related to the plot was Anya having been pregnant.  Emily being a shoplifter?  Totally irrelevant.  Kura snorting Adderall, ODing and ending up in the hospital?  Random.  There's a couple mentions of Hailey being worried about her, and then at the very end like two sentences about how Kura OD, was hospitalized but don't worry she's going to be fine.  What?  What was the point?  The blow job scene?  Completely gratuitous.  And Hailey decides she's going to make it extra special and sucks on Altoids to make it tingly and ends up causing her boyfriend considerable pain.  Just weird.

There were too many plot points that went nowhere.  Too much popular brand name dropping.  Too many characters who just seemed to be there to be "the shoplifting one."  "The fat one."  "The drug snorting one."

Watch Mean Girls again instead.  Lots more fun.

Confessions of a Hater comes out August 27, 2013.