Ivy’s kind of a bitch. She swears in class, she spits in people’s faces, and she seems to be angry about everything. But she’s got some good reasons for being such a bitch. Her bitter, single mom is trying to force Ivy, a high school senior, into business school. Ivy dreams of art school.

Ivy’s friends are the types that do stuff without her, purposely not include her because she’s always so angry and yet can’t see that she’s so angry because they’re always making her feel unwanted. She has problems with a teacher that are partly Ivy’s fault and partly the teacher’s.

Then there’s Josh. A teen photog she meets while checking out art schools. The only problem? Josh lives in Massachusetts, far away from Ivy in Maine. Plus, he has a boatload of his own issues.

Does any of this give Ivy free reign to lash out, sometimes violently? Nah. But who wants to read a book about a character who always does the right thing? Not me. It’s much more interesting to see Ivy act out and then deal with the consequences of her actions.

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