A few white lies during a simple game of truth or dare spin out of control and make life very complicated for Lia in this brand-new novel from Barbara Dee. When Lia returns after a summer with her eccentric aunt, it feels like everything has changed within her group of five friends. Everyone just seems more…dramatic. And after playing a game of Truth or Dare, Lia discovers how those divides are growing wider, and tells a few white lies about what really happened over the summer in order to “keep up.” But is “keeping up” with her BFFs really worth it? At the last minute, Lia backs out of plans to attend campwith her best friends. Instead, she decides to spend the summer with her eccentric Aunt Shelby (and a number of cats) in Maine. Lia needs time away from her friends: the fivegirls' lives, bodies, and friendships are changing, Judy Blume-style; worries aboutbeing last to grow breasts or start menstruating have become all-consuming. Lia has also recently lost her mom in a car accident, which makes everything evenharder to bear. Blundering Aunt Shelby tries girl talk and bra shopping, but Lia finds herself more aggravated than comforted. At summer's end, the five friendsreunite with a mean-spirited round of truth or dare (which Lia lies her way through),and then proceed to test, challenge, bully, and deceive one another on through the beginning of the school year, as they start seventh grade. The book's structureand plot make for light and fast reading, but the characters are all interestinglyflawed, including Lia, whose candid first-person narration allows readers to seetrouble coming before she does. By the end of the book, the group's friendships havebeen forever altered, but when the truths are revealed and the anger settles, all ofthe characters emerge as more empowered and independent young women. ( The HornBook ) Barbara Dee is the author of fourteen middle grade novels including Unstuck , Haven Jacobs Saves the Planet , Violets Are Blue , My Life in the Fish Tank , Maybe He Just Likes You , Everything I Know About You , Halfway Normal , and Star-Crossed . Her books have earned several starred reviews and have been named to many best-of lists, including The Washington Post ’s Best Children’s Books, the ALA Notable Children’s Books, the ALA Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, the NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, and the ALA Rainbow List Top Ten. Barbara lives with her family, including a naughty cat named Luna and a sweet rescue hound named Ripley, in Westchester County, New York. Truth or Dare The Comma Club I RIPPED OPEN THE BOX, and there I was. My name, times five hundred. Amalia Jessica Rollins. Seeing my name in print always gave me a weird feeling. But this wasn’t just weird. It was wrong. Not even asking me for input, Dad had ordered five hundred labels for the stuff I was bringing to sleepaway camp. How had he come up with the number five hundred? Even if I labeled every bristle on my toothbrush, I didn’t own half that many things altogether. And the font. It was all frilly and girly, like what you’d use to invite someone to a tea party. This is my sock. Sorry it smells like feet. I say, would you care for a crumpet? Plus, he’d ordered the wrong name. Nobody called me Amalia, which sounded like a fussy old lady who wore lace collars, or maybe an old-timey girl who played piano for her cat. I was just Lia, definitely not a lace-collar sort of person, and I couldn’t play piano, except for “Chopsticks.” And if I stuck all these labels on my clothes and towels and stuff, I’d be spending the entire summer going, Actually, it’s Lia. No, just Lia. L-I-A. You pronounce it Lee-uhh. Another thing: He’d included my middle name. Using your middle name on camp labels made you sound kind of like a baby. The fact that Jessica was also my mom’s name—well, I didn’t need five hundred labels to remind me about her. It’s not like I’d forgotten anything in two and a half years. And if all that wasn’t enough, the labels Dad had ordered were iron-on. Abi’s mom had told him to get the stick-on kind, but maybe he forgot. Or else he remembered that Mom had always used the iron-on kind, so he assumed they worked better. Maybe they did—but I was supposed to leave for camp in two days. I didn’t know the first thing about how to iron. Even if I downloaded some instructions, ironing labels—five hundred!—at the end of a scorching June sounded to me like medieval torture. I plopped onto my bed. All my camp clothes—shorts, tees, swimsuits, jeans, socks, pj’s, sweaters, raincoat, underwear—were piled in semi-neat stacks on my bedroom floor, waiting for somebody to pack them. Me, obviously. Well, I could just write Lia Rollins on everything in Sharpie, couldn’t I? But what if the ink ran in the rain, or in the washing machine, and all the clothing I owned got smeared? Or what if the ink bled through to the other side, and so my back said snilloR