The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies by Lizabeth Zindel

• 01/17/2014
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The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies
Lizabeth Zindel
Viking Juvenile (2008)
ISBN 9780670062171
Reviewed by Spencer Zaborowski (age 13) for Readers Views (5/08)

“The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies” by Lizabeth Zindel is an amusing, interesting fiction book about a girl named Maggie who just moved to Manhattan and gets a chance to start over and make new friends at a snobbish, all-girls school.  She spends her senior year there, and it is nothing at all like she is used to!  She feels out of place, and it is very awkward for her to try to make friends and have them accept her.  She can’t seem to do anything right!  One night at a party, she meets three of the most popular girls in the school – Victoria, Lexi and Sydney.  Maggie finds out they belong to a secret club called The Revelers.  To her surprise, Maggie also finds out that they want her to join The Revelers also.  At the party she meets a very cute boy named Connar.

I laughed at the part on the bus to school one day after the party, when they first began to talk to each other.  Victoria and her friends are very rich, and one day after school, they show Maggie a place called “The Wall” at Victoria’s house.  “The Wall” is just that – a wall that has written on it not gossip, but the truth about what is happening in other kids’ and teachers’ lives.  Victoria tells Maggie that each week she has to add tTT’s (little truths and big truths) in order to stay in this club.  Maggie doesn’t like this wall, but since she doesn’t want to get in trouble with her friends, she has to keep the wall a secret and add to the information on it.  Maggie gets caught up in the life of the club, and a lot of misunderstandings among her other friends happen.

I enjoyed this book very much.  It was interesting and easy to follow.  It had some funny parts, and parts that wanted to make you jump inside the book and pull Maggie back from what she is doing!  She can’t seem to see that someone will get hurt because of all the things that are said.  I liked all of the characters, and they seemed very realistic.  It also made me think about what happens when people gossip – even though the girls called it the truth, and did not think of it as gossip, there were still some hurtful things that were written.  I especially liked the ending – it was suspenseful.  I think that teens and young adult women will like “The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies.”