Try Your Worst
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
I Kissed Shara Wheeler meets The Agathas in this cozy mystery about rivals who must find out who has been framing them for crimes they didn't commit, from Stonewall Honor-winning author Chatham Greenfield.
Sadie Katz and Cleo Chapman have been rivals since birth. Literally. They entered the world competing to be the first baby born in the new year, and ever since Cleo beat out Sadie for that title, she has been nonchalantly beating Sadie at just about everything--and making it look easy.
Now in the fall of their senior year, Sadie and Cleo are neck-and-neck for valedictorian. But then a string of increasingly serious pranks take over their high school, and all signs point to Sadie and Cleo as the perpetrators. Suddenly expulsion is on the line, and the only way to clear their names is to team up and find out who is framing them. It's not only suspects the girls are questioning, though. Sadie's ivy league dream isn't feeling as appealing as it once did, and Cleo is wondering if it's about time she start fighting for what she really wants instead of just accepting whatever comes easiest. With their futures on the line, the two grow closer, and both begin to wonder: Could it be that Sadie and Cleo weren't meant to be rivals at all, and were instead destined to be something more?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Over the years, the rivalry between current high school seniors Sadie Katz and Cleo Chapman has evolved from academic competition into all-out prank war that includes sending singing telegrams and instigating food fights. After an unknown third party frames both girls for vandalism, though, the school threatens them with suspension and other consequences that could threaten their collegiate goals should things escalate further. Now the pair must overcome years of antagonism and misunderstandings to discover who's implicating them. As they investigate, they open up to each other about their respective challenges—Sadie's struggles to manage depression and anxiety, Cleo's experience with chronic pain stemming from hypermobility—and their newfound friendship blooms into something deeper. But when the teens' enemy doubles down on their targeted smear campaign, the fallout jeopardizes Sadie and Cleo's fledgling relationship and respective futures. This emotionally rich sapphic enemies-to-lovers tale by Greenfield (Time and Time Again) touches on serious subject matter including mental health and invisible illness. Lighthearted prose, good-natured humor, and rousing character dynamics temper these weighty themes across the girls' uplifting emotional journeys and fulfilling romance. The protagonists read as white; Sadie is Jewish. Ages 13–up.
