Book Review: Worst Enemies/Best Friends

Book: Worst Enemies/Best Friends (Beacon Street Girls book #1) by Annie Bryant

Edition: Paperback

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

At some point everyone knows what it's like to be the new person whether it's as a new student, moving to a new city or starting a new job.

In this story, Charlotte Ramsey is very well used to the experience of being the new kid because of having to relocate quite a few times due to her father's job. She is also used to the struggle of trying to adjust and to make new friends before ending up having to pack up and move all over again. Charlotte and her father have lived in Africa, Paris and Australia but have returned to the US to move to Brookline, Massachusetts. It's where Charlotte was born and where they had lived for a short period of time.

She was hoping to avoid her usual bad luck on the first day of school. However, her first day of 7th grade at Abigail Adams Junior High may have been the worst one yet. Her homeroom teacher Ms. Rodriguez gave the class assigned seats for lunch which would not have even been a problem for anyone that is other than Charlotte. She caused a disaster when the table cloth accidentally was pulled off the table leaving herself and her classmates Katani Summers, Avery Madden and Maeve Kaplan-Taylor covered in sticky food.

Surprisingly she had high hopes that the assigned lunch seats would have made it easier for her to make new friends. But after that incident she was sure Katani, Avery and Maeve would never want to be her friends.

What I like about this story is that it not only follows Charlotte but you also get the other girls' point of view. There was a hurdle for these girls to become friends but when they do it's delightful to see as their friendship deepens. But a misunderstanding, well more like an omission of the truth, may bring about the end of this burgeoning friendship.

This was an interesting and fast read with the story featuring a diverse group of girls. Charlotte is shy and slightly clumsy but she loves to read and one day aspires to be a writer like her dad. Katani is smart and has a love of fashion but she also deals with feeling overshadowed by her two older sisters' accomplishments as well as trying to be there for her third older sister Kelley who is autistic. Avery is very into sports and animals and may seem a bit hyper but she's thoughtful and caring. And Maeve has a love of old films and aspires to be an actor despite having a learning disability. She's also a tiny bit boy crazy and a total romantic.

I was drawn into the story from the beginning and the writing has a way of making the characters' emotions feel real such as Charlotte's feelings of loneliness and humiliation to experiencing Maeve's embarrassingly bad date. Worst Enemies/Best Friends is a book I think middle grade readers (or readers in general) might enjoy because it's filled with humor, drama, friendship and a bit of character self-discovery.