The Rise and Fall of a 10th-Grade Social Climber

Mimi’s aiming to infiltrate her exclusive high school’s coolest clique, but it may not go as planned . . . “An irresistible read” (Booklist). After the collapse of her parents’ marriage, Mimi Schulman leaves her mother in Houston to look after her befuddled photographer father in New York. She’s too preoccupied with family problems to think much about her new life. But then Mimi’s first hour at the Baldwin School—an institution where teachers offer psychoanalysis instead of grades and students hold cocktail parties in the bathroom between classes—leaves her spinning. When her childhood best friend bets her she can’t befriend the “cool girls,” Mimi accepts the challenge—only to discover that social climbing in New York is no easy task. Fitting in with the popular girls back in Texas was nothing compared to joining Baldwin’s clique of raccoon-eyed waifs . . . Rubbing shoulders with the offspring of diplomats and celebrities, all with secrets and dysfunctions, Mimi finds herself moving from one bizarre situation to the next—a fake-ID deli, a topless bar, a Jacuzzi in Trump Tower—and in the position of winning a bet that threatens to make her lose sight of herself, in this novel with lots of heart and a wicked sense of humor.