Populazzi

Cara has never been one of those girls: confident, self-possessed, and always ready with the perfect thing to say. A girl at the very top of the popularity tower. One of the Populazzi.

Now, junior year could change everything. Cara's moving to a new school, and her best friend urges her to seize the moment-with the help of the Ladder. Its rungs are relationships, and if Cara transforms into the perfect girlfriend for guys ever-higher on the tower, she'll reach the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi.

The Ladder seems like a lighthearted social experiment, a straight climb up, but it quickly becomes gnarled and twisted. And when everything goes wrong, only the most audacious act Cara can think of has a chance of setting things even a little bit right.

• A High School Social Experiment: Cara’s best friend presents the Ladder—a plan to date her way up the popularity tower by becoming the perfect girlfriend for a series of increasingly popular guys.
• Reinventing Yourself: After a mortifying kindergarten incident defined her social life, a new school is Cara’s one chance to leave her awkward past behind and become a confident, self-possessed “Supreme Populazzi.”
• A Cinderella Story with a Twist: Instead of a fairy godmother, Cara has a binder full of research. Instead of a prince, she has a list of targets. But this social climbing scheme quickly proves to be anything but a fairy tale.
• An Unexpected First Target: The plan starts with Archer, a witty theater geek who wasn’t supposed to be anything more than the first rung on the ladder... but some rules are made to be broken.