Popularity is easy. You just have to ask the experts: the military child, the remaining hippie children or any child whose parents travel constantly for their profession. Popularity remains a mystery often only to those who stay put in one place all their life, but us travelers have studied and know the map for success. It’s easy since it doesn’t really vary from place to place that much. As a military child myself, I am well versed in operations of fitting in and sizing up a new location, making strategy and inching into the spot you covet. The one you think will make you happy. The one you think will make you who you’re meant to be. These battle plans are all familiar as well to the main character of Jennifer Ziegler’s How Not to be Popular, which has been newly released in paperback.
Maggie Dempsey is a traveler. A child of free parents who feel the need to move on and never stay in one place for too long, never to own or belong to anything. Over and over again she has said goodbye. Goodbye to familiar places, friendships and now that the time has come…goodbye to her boyfriend Trevor. It’s the same every time. The promises to keep in touch, friends forever but it never lasts, each time she will slowly lose the life she once led and be forced into a new one where she must shift for herself and find her spot in the hierarchy of the high school world. However this time will be different. She can’t control the moving so she decides to control the feelings. If she makes no friends, no attachments…. it won’t hurt to leave right? And so she chooses to do everything she can to be unpopular, breaking every popular rule we all know. However she forgets one thing, new is almost always popular at first and confidence can make it only more so.
In a hilariously real novel about not just what makes you popular but about what makes you you, Ziegler has created a truly special cast of characters that make How Not to be Popular hard to put down. It’s a read that will be true to the modern teenager and yet still make those of us a little older remember our high school experiences were not much different. Not much changes; trends may come and go but popular stays pretty much the same. And no matter how much she tries, when you’re as unique as Maggie, well it just won’t let you slip by! Funny, honest and oh so relatable How Not to be Popular is a must read book for teen girls or for that special someone who may ever so barely remember what it’s like to be one.
Stiletto Storytime 
This sounds like such a fantastic book. I am going to add it to my TBR list. Great review!
I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!! I definitely enjoyed every little bit of it. I have you bookmarked your site to check out the new stuff you post.
I’ve read this book, and it’s absolutely hilarious! A+ Jennifer Ziegler!
P.S. I almost said it had me in stitches, but I suppose that would give my age away, huh?
This one sounds like a lot of fun. Thanks for the recommendation!
i loved all the parts except (spoiler alert) her and jack trying to be “more than friends” at the end. I thought they SO weren’t right for each other!