Pushing Perfect

By Michelle Falkoff

Kara Winters is always striving for perfection. But when her anxiety takes over, the price of perfection spirals out of control…

'Perfect' Kara Winters has always hated her nickname. Especially now that she no longer lives up to it. She used to have normal friends, she used to be normal. Now all she wants is to get into Harvard and leave high school behind.

So when the pressure to ace her exams finally gets to her, Kara does one tiny bad thing, just to help out, to ease the stress. If it will help Kara get a perfect exam score and one step closer to a new life, it’s a price she’s willing to pay.

But she never expects to get caught out. Or that Alex, Raj and her other not-so-perfect new friends might get embroiled in a horrible mess that could ruin all of their futures.

Sometimes perfection isn't what it's cracked up to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9780008110710

Michelle Falkoff

Michelle Falkoff is the author of Playlist for the Dead, Pushing Perfect, and Questions I Want to Ask You. Her fiction and reviews have been published in ZYZZYVA, DoubleTake, and the Harvard Review, among other places. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently serves as director of communication and legal reasoning at Northwestern University School of Law. Visit her online at www.michellefalkoff.com.

Reviews for Pushing Perfect

[jennie_103 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a good case of "never judge a book by its cover". I bypassed this one for a while because the cover just looked too teenage (I'm an adult who just happens to still read a lot of children's/YA fiction). And yet when I did get round to it, I found it completely absorbing. One of those can't-put-it-down books. And I absolutely hadn't guessed the twist at the end!

[thursohighlibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the most exciting voices in young adult fiction, Jenny Valentine succeeds again with this story of a family coping with the death of a child.

[4sarad_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

First I should say that I did like the characters and cared about them. That being said, I didn't like much else. The plot varied between being unbelievable (coincidences, etc.) to being way too predictable. Also, the formatting of the dialogue was annoying. I guess I've just read so many books like this that this one doesn't stand out in any way for me, other than the fact they're in London rather than in the US.