Harmless

By Zoe Jacobson, Age 13, Literary Editor of TweenTribune

Harmless is about a group of girls with a problem: They think the only way they can get out, without getting grounded, is to lie.

Lying is often an easy way out — everyone lies sometimes. But when the girls say they were assaulted, the whole town gets involved.

Police try to catch the assailant, even though there was no assailant. Then a girl in a nearby city gets kidnapped, and everyone believes the man accused of assaulting the girls is the kidnapper.

Lies lead to more lies. The girls convince themselves that the kidnapper is their assailant.

This book switches narration from girl to girl to girl to show what was going on in each girls’ mind that night and after. Some of the characters were flat and stereotypical, but they were balanced by the deeper, more sophisticated ones. I enjoyed this book, even though it was way too predictable.