It All Started With a Dare

Author: Lindsay Faith Rech

Published: Sept. 13, 2010

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

# Pages: 312

eARC provided by: Publisher and Netgalley

Summary: Netgalley

Self-proclaimed nobody CG Silverman sees her move to an upscale new school as her chance to be somebody different. Her devil-may-care attitude attracts the in-clique, and before CG realizes it, a routine game of truth or dare launches her to iconic status.
While this rebel image helps secure CG's newfound popularity, it also propels her through a maze of unprecedented chaos, with each new lie and every dare opening doors that, in most cases, were better off left shut.
CG is on a collision course with disaster. Will she be able to keep up the façade? Or will the whole world find out she's a fraud?

'It all started with a dare' had me laughing from almost the very first page. Ms Rech's dry sense of humour is just wonderful, and I was chuckling my way through the entire book. But don't think that the book was just funny. There were actually some fairly serious themes throughout the book. One that stood out very strongly to me, was the idea that every action has consequences. Situations keep arising in the book and CG just gets in deeper and deeper, no matter what she does. I actually found myself getting quite nervous for her at one point, which just goes to show what a well written character she was. CG's surprise at quickly becoming one of the 'in crowd' seemed quite genuine, and I didn't feel it was unreasonable that she would want to stay there.

One of the things that becomes apparent early on in this book is the extremely colourful language that Ms. Gibsons' characters use. Now I personally did not find this offensive, but some people might. A lot of the language is used as internal dialogue, and I don't know about you, but I often say a lot of things under my breath that I wouldn't actually say out loud, so it all rang true for me. It's a fact of life that teens swear, even if they try not to in front of adults, and for me this helped make the situations in the book more real.

As I read further into the book, I was reminded in many ways of the movie 'Mean Girls' with Lindsay Lohan. Dont' get me wrong, it's not the same story, and I do believe the situations that arise in the book could be a little more serious, but if you've seen and liked the movie, you'll certainly love the book.

The most important thing I got from this book is the message that it's ok to be yourself, whether that means being popular or not. I would actually put this book in the category of 'cautionary tale', but you'll laugh out loud while learning your lessons!