It's soooooooooo basic though.
All of the action takes place over a single weekend and half the next Monday at school. There are five characters, each getting point of view chapters, and then a sixth gets the last chapter.
Unfortunately, not one of the characters is actually that likeable. And most of their parents aren't either.
We'll just go down the list of characters in order of their chapters.
MAYA: Maya is the girl that gets left out of a Saturday night sleepover at Darcy's. This is all on the whim of Candace, the group leader. Maya's father says they're going to Six Flags and she can invite one friend, so when she calls around, she learns everyone else is going to this sleepover and she was left out. Very upset, she tries to back out of the amusement part, but can't stay home alone, so along she goes. That night, she's the victim of a nasty prank call by Darcy. Maya's mother is a Russian immigrant who came over 17 years ago, so Darcy makes cracks about both Maya and her mother. Maya's mom is the best parent of the lot. She calls right back and speaks to Darcy's older sister, who's another good character, about what just happened. In a future chapter, it's mentioned that Maya moved from a dangerous neighborhood and it's this that actually drew Candace to her. She gets interested in people and then loses interest. Maya eventually comes to terms with things and bravely goes to school the next day. She still avoids the others until she's forced not to. I want to like Maya more than I do. She's being dumped from the group because she's babyish. People do outgrow each other, but there are nicer ways to part ways. But her self-harm-level nail-biting and meekness managed to annoy me, too. Not that I'm justifying what the other girls did. Maya seems to know how to be a friend better than any of the others. I'm just saying she's not a perfectly likeable heroine.
RENEE: Renee is a strange character. She's caught in the middle of her parents' divorce and is actually the only reason they ever got married. They didn't really love each other, but her mom got pregnant, so married they got. And then look where it got them. Renee's dad is an okay guy. He works a rough job and tries to make his daughter happy, but he doesn't know exactly what she likes or needs. Not that she speaks up to tell him though, so I see this more as her fault than his. Her mom is an asshole. She's obsessed with her looks, spends hours getting ready, and wants plastic surgery. When Renee tells her about them excluding Maya, her mother asks why she's worried about it when it's Maya's problem. See. Asshole. Renee has some weird habits. She's very slow to speak and "um"s a lot when she does. She's mildly obsessed with Darcy's perfect older sister Keloryn. She's about as likeable as Maya, but there's something about her that triggers my protective instincts. She's the one who feels bad about how Maya's being treated, but she doesn't have the courage to do anything about it. She gives herself a time frame, planning on being nice to her in school on Monday, as opposed to calling her or emailing her over the weekend. It's better than the others did. Then at school, Renee sees that Candace and Darcy have now turned on Brianna, too, and try to make a big deal of something she said to Renee at the sleepover. But Renee isn't mad about and refuses to be. Renee is the one who ends up approaching Maya in the cafeteria to make amends, so she might actually be my favorite of the five.
BRIANNA: Darcy's chapter comes first, so I'm going out of order to skip to Brianna. Brianna is interested in acting and hates her big nose. Both her parents are professors. Her mom teaches microbiology and her dad astronomy, so she's grown up in a very educational, intellectual environment, although she also talks about God. She's the only one to do so, which is rather interesting considering what her upbringing seems to be. Brianna is a go along. She goes along with Candace ditching Maya, but unlike Renee, she actually has her own thoughts almost in agreement. She thinks Maya acts too young and doesn't like it. She even asks Candace how to act around Maya in class, which Candace does not like one bit. Brianna is the first to say to Candace that she doesn't hate Maya though, which of course Candace doesn't like, and Monday morning, Brianna finds herself the next target. Once she's in that position, Brianna is finally able to put herself in Maya's shoes and realize how wrong she's been. She hides in the nurse's office for a lot of the day, then rallies and joins Maya and Renee in the lunch line. But she's still mostly a go along. She goes along with Renee making up with Maya, even though nothing's going to change her own personal thoughts about Maya. She does realize, there at the cafeteria table, that she's happy to be free of Candace, so perhaps there's hope for her yet!
DARCY: Oh, this bitch. She's actually worse than Candace. She's the one who acts on what Candace only says. She's the one who pranked Maya. There's no explanation for Darcy's behavior. She's a rich girl, so I'm sure she's spoiled, but her older sister is a very nice person and their mother seems decent, too. She's super pissed at Darcy for the prank call and grounds her until she apologizes to both Maya and her mom. Darcy is the one who will truly be lost without Candace, as she's really got nothing else. She lives for pleasing her so-called friend. After overhearing Darcy's end of a phone conversation with Candace, her older sister Keloryn says "Brianna's next, huh? It should be your turn in no time. I'm looking forward to it!" Yeah, so am I, Keloryn. Darcy's downfall begins Monday, when Candace turns her attention to another girl, Nicole. She's not impressed when Darcy says she has to go apologize to Maya and you can tell Darcy's not going to last long, especially after what Nicole says in her final chapter. Darcy does go apologize, but it's so fake that all you really want is to see the little bitch's downfall, but we never get to. It will happen after the book ends.
CANDACE: The queen of mean herself. But she's an odd character. She's not rich as mean girls typically are. She's unhappy at home, where she gets her three younger siblings foisted on her all the time. I think a lot of her attitude comes from that, but she also is rather strange. Her entire first chapter has her disconnected from the other girls, staring at fire and thinking how destructive it is, remembering seeing a sequoia and feeling freaked out by its age and immensity. Her second chapter is mostly her being annoyed at her mom, because she's given up her whole life to parent and lets herself look like a frumpy mess. She only gets those two chapters. The rest of the time, you're just reading about her through the other girls' eyes. The way she gets interested in people and then drops them is very problematic, but there's something deep about this girl that interests me. Her chapter about the fire and the tree was the best in the book. It's just weird.
And then Nicole gets the final chapter, where she and Candace, sitting alone at lunch, pick apart Darcy. Nicole thinks to herself that she'll help Candace ditch Darcy. Nicole feels like a cross between Candace herself and Darcy. Not Darcy's level of mindless follower, but still coming in second to Candace.
I think this book could have been at least twice as long. Get more into the girls' heads. Into their lives. Have it stretch out more and show what happens after these three pivotal days. It's a decent quick look at young girl bullying and its consequences, but it's not handled to its full potential. At the same time, it's done differently, too, with the more complex characters.
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