The Mean Girl Apologies
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You know that catchy song you keep hearing on the radio? It’s about you.
Natalie Jamison has spent five years trying to forget the girl she was in high school: popular, pretty…and, okay, mean. Now in her twenties and living once again in her small town, she’s right back where she was: following Queen Bee Amber and keeping secrets from her best friend, Sarah.
Secrets like Jack Moreland.
Everyone knows Jack Moreland—his new album, Good Enough, is everywhere. He’s famous. Impossibly handsome. Completely untouchable. But what none of Natalie’s old clique knows is that in high school, Natalie and Jack fell in love. And their secret relationship was incredible, painful—and earth-shattering enough to inspire an entire album.
Facing friends and enemies isn’t easy, but Natalie will go to great lengths to prove she is good enough—to her friends, to herself, and most of all, to the small-town boy turned worldwide heartthrob she never forgot
Jennifer's Review:
The book goes back and forth from current day where Natalie is stuck back in her home town copy editing for the local newspaper, still following her high school friends even though she didn't really like most of them, and then back five years to the final year of high school. In high school she was part of the popular crowd, following and desperately trying to please Amber a bona fide a mean girl/Queen Bee. When we are following Natalie in high school she meets Jack, a musician who was not part of the popular group. Natalie is all about appearances and pleasing Amber But she likes Jack so she ends up with a secret relationship with Jack, all the while being mean & ignoring him in public. Away from her popular group she is a different girl (the real Natalie) and that's the side that Jack falls for and in turn accepts being her little secret.
Now in present day Jack is famous, with a hit album, Good Enough. The big hit is playing on the radio constantly, and only Natalie & Jack know its really about her.....She's always regretted her actions to him and others in high school and decides its time to put things right. She does the right thing - she apologizes to those she had hurt.
Natalie is still in love with Jack, never really stopped loving him. At first you don't like Natalie -- I mean what's to like -- through the flashbacks we learn she was a bully by association, rude, and mean. Then we start to learn why she's like she is, what happened in the past to her to make her this way, and how she became trapped in a cycle from which she know how to break out of.
Jack, well you like him from the beginning -- he was a great guy, secure in himself, down to earth, and sexy ;-). An easy guy to fall in love with for sure!
I liked how the book showed how people look back with regrets sometimes, wishing you could change the past. It was a road to recovery for Natalie -- filled with healing for herself and also owning up to her mistakes. It also shows that if friends really do love you then they accept you for who you are. If they don't then its better to know that and move on to find true friends who will.
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