Red

Imagine living in a place where anyone who doesn’t have red hair is disdained and treated as an outcast. Then imagine you are one of the most popular, most successful girls in high school in that place, largely because of your beautiful red hair, but there is a big secret. Felicity St. John is that girl living in Scarletville, and her secret is that her mother started dying Felicity’s not-red-enough hair when she was a toddler. Now she seems to have everything a girl could dream of – a great boyfriend, a good chance to win the Miss Scarlet pageant, prom coming up. Life is perfect, until Gabby, one of the brunette outcasts at school, starts a campaign of blackmail that could bring her perfect existence to an awful end. Gabby’s demands seem designed to humiliate Felicity at every turn, but she has to tolerate it or be outed as a fake.

Alison Cherry has written a compelling book that shines a light on the vicissitudes of high school life and how painful the time can be. It is hard to cheer for a protagonist who is living a lie, but the story is a page turner.