Invisible

by Marni Bates

Overview

It's not easy being best friends with a celebrity. . .

I'm invisible at my high school and I'm fine with it. It's kind of inevitable with a name like Jane Smith. But when the school newspaper staff insisted that I write a cover story, I decided to find out just how much scandal one geeky girl could uncover.

Except I never expected to find myself starting a fist-fight, auditioning for the school's Romeo &Juliet musical, running away with a Romeo of my own, befriending the most popular girl in school, or trying to avoid one very cute photographer, who makes it impossible to to be invisible. . .

""Fans of Meg Cabot will find Marni's voice equally charming and endearing.""--Julie Kagawa, New York Times bestselling author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780758269386
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	06/25/2013
Series:	Smith High Series
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Marni Bates still can’t believe she falls in love with fictional characters for a living. Her career began during her freshman year at Lewis & Clark College, when she wrote her autobiography, Marni, for HCI’s Louder Than Words series. By the time she graduated, she was on the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age 2010 List and had made her fiction debut with her young adult novel, Awkward.

Marni is still adjusting to life in sunny Los Angeles, California. When not writing in front of her air conditioning unit, she can be found rollerblading, bargaining at garage sales, reading romance novels, and watching copious amounts of TV—strictly for artistic inspiration, of course. She loves hearing from readers and hopes that you will visit her at marnibates.com.

Interviews

Author Note Marni Bates, author of INVISIBLE and NOTABLE

Every high school has its own version of the Notables.

Those popular girls who can flick back their hair and smile coyly at whomever catches their interest? Yeah, I was not one of them. Not even close. I was the geek in the back of the classroom whose idea of a great weekend involved burying her nose in the pages of a romance novel.

Who am I kidding? That's still my idea of a perfect weekend.

So at first writing a book from the perspective of the most popular girl at Smith High School sounded like yet another less-than-brilliant plan to add to my list. Right up there with giving myself a haircut at the three in the morning during a fit of pique. Oh, and then there was the time I thought pulling an April Fools prank on my literary agent would be downright hilarious...

I kept trying to convince myself that this book wasn't an option; Chelsea Halloway and I were just too diametrically opposed to ever put our differences aside.

I've never been skinny, blonde, fashionable, flirty, or even slightly skilled when it comes to most athletic activities. I'm fairly certain my ballet instructor breathed a huge sigh of relief when the chubby one-girl wrecking crew (who couldn't tell her left from her right) called it quits after less than two months of lessons.

I couldn't relate to the Notables.

That's what I told myself. Repeatedly. It was appallingly easy to convince myself of that lie. Then again, graduating from high school didn't come with any obligation to reexamine my own set of irrational prejudices. I didn't fit in with the popular kids therefore they were secretly pod people who had found some way to rig the system.

That's honestly how I thought of them at the time.

It wasn't until I started listening to Chelsea's fears and insecurities that I discovered how much we had in common. This girl I had instantly dismissed as the anti-Marni faked her way through social situations too. She just had a very different set of techniques.

But both of us shared one particularly crippling fear; that we would never be enough.

Smart enough. Pretty enough. Lovable enough.

I would be lying if I said that my burgeoning friendship with a fictional character instantly silenced those voices of self-doubt. But Chelsea did change my perspective on a whole lot of things, including what makes a compelling villain.

And I will forever be grateful that she allowed me to go where this particular geek had never gone before...

Editorial Reviews

Wit is the order of the day as the good girl who never fights back learns to do just that when she's forced to defend her friends in this high school takedown. Jane Smith feels invisible not only in school, but too often to her own friends. But when the football hero insults her equally shy friend, Isobel, Jane literally punches him on the nose. The school counselor punishes her but not the hero. To make matters worse, she is assigned a hard-hitting front-page story for the school newspaper by the bullying editor and intimidating teacher--with pushy photographer Scott as her collaborator. When Jane's story appears in the paper, everything goes wrong in a way that readers easily will predict. Of course the plot is absurd; it's a comedy. The author continues the formula she concocted for her previous books (Awkward, 2012, etc.), keeping the wit dialed up to 11 in a comedy of errors. Constant quips about school, life and current situations will delight readers. Nearly everything works for laughs, but Jane also learns some solid life lessons about bullying and courage, and she teaches some lessons about friendship to her own circle as well. Some romance, also transparent from the start, adds interest. Next to be featured? The school queen bee. Readers who like Bates' formula will want to stay tuned. (Comedy. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews