This sequel to The Kind of Friends We Used to Be (2009) and The Secret Language of Girls (2004), both published by Atheneum, follows friends Marylin and Kate through the second half of seventh grade. The former best friends have found some common ground once again despite their vastly differing interests and styles. Both are struggling with how to balance internal desires with outside pressures and expectations, with boys complicating the picture for each of them. Marylin isn't comfortable with her fellow cheerleaders' pressure to give up things and people she cares about. She likes being popular, but is it worth such a high price? Kate, critical of Marylin for succumbing to the pressure, realizes she's done the same thing when she abandons a friend's proposal for a school project to help her maybe boyfriend with another-one she doesn't believe is as worthy. Frances O'Roark Dowell continues to develop these two characters whose successes and failures will be recognizable to many readers. While the cheerleaders in the novel are unfortunate stereotypes, Kate and Marilyn are distinct and realistic characters-two girls who are gradually becoming more confident in being true to themselves. (Ages 10-13)

Marylin and Kate find that boys can be just as complicated as friendship in this conclusion to the bestselling Secret Language of Girls trilogy, a “quietly perceptive tour de force” (Kirkus Reviews) from the bestselling author of Dovey Coe and The Secret Language of Girls.

Marylin knows that, as a middle school cheerleader, she has certain obligations. She has to smile as she walks down the hall, be friends with the right people, and keep her manicure in tip-top shape. But Marylin is surprised to learn there are also rules about whom she’s allowed to like—and Benjamin, the student body president, is deemed unacceptable. But maybe there is a way to convince the cheerleaders that her interest in Benjamin is for their own good—maybe she’ll pretend that she’s using him to get new cheerleading uniforms!

Kate, of course, finds this ludicrous. She is going to like who she likes, thank you very much. And she just so happens to be spending more time than ever with Matthew Holler. But even a girl who marches to the beat of her own guitar strings can play the wrong notes—and are she and Matthew even playing the same song? She’s just not sure. So when Matthew tells Kate that the school’s Audio Lab needs funding from the student government, she decides to do what she can to help him get it.

But there isn’t enough money to go around, and it soon becomes clear that only one of the two girls can get her way. Ultimately, though, is it even her way? Or are both girls pushing for something they never really wanted in the first place?