The Bad Girls' Club

Fresh, contemporary writing ensures a perfect teenage read - the author is a teacher and so has an ear for teenage concerns and issues Age-range: 14+ Centering round a book club makes the novel an ideal choice for schools as it demonstrates the power of books in an understated yet effective manner

Centering around four girls who are thrown together in a book club for school, this book is also about their friendships, fallings-out, and growing-up.Four girls - Mary, Bea, Meena and Atlanta - are thrown together when they are picked for very different reasons by their teacher, to form a book review club. Their discussions and reviews will be heard on radio, chaired and presented by the incredibly cool Jazz. As the girls gradually relax and talk more and more animatedly about what they think about the different books, they find they are learning from, as well as about, each other. And so they become friends...Until one day Mary does the unforgivable and, having flirted outrageously with Bea's new boyfriend, makes an all-out play for him. The tender new friendship of the foursome is fractured as a result of what Mary has done. Narrated by the different characters in turn, this is fresh, contemporary and compulsive writing that every teenager will identify with, charting the insecurities and the tests of friendship that are part of growing up the world over.