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.

• ISBN13: 9780008110697
• Publish Date: 29 December 2016 (first published 25 October 2016)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 30 December 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[Leah]

Pushing Perfect was such a good read, which kind of surprised me as I read Playlists for the Dead and wasn’t exactly in awe, but this one really had me gripped from beginning to end. I love novels about blackmail and this one was right up my street – along with Kara, I had no idea who was the one blackmailing them and the way it all came together was kind of perfect; I was completely baffled by who the blackmailer was – I had an inkling, but I was still stunned, because it was just so insane!

Kara was a great narrator, although it made me sad that she let her skin condition ruin so much of her life! I mean, tons of teens get spots, and I understand this was more than just a few spots, but it still seemed quite an extreme reaction that she did SCAM before she went anywhere, ever, and I’m starting to think she even slept in her make-up. She ruined her friendships, she stopped swimming and the Kara we meet after all of that, is very much a sad shell of who she used to be. So to see her become friends with Alex was great, because it helped her loneliness, and we got to see her come out of her shell again, although it led to all sorts of other problems!

I liked the idea of the drug and I liked how it all unravelled, although I still have one question – who took that first ever picture of Kara, hmmm? That was actually never answered and I am still super curious who it was. But the rest of it? Seeing Kara, Alex and Raj all scramble to wonder what to do, and while people might say why didn’t they tell their parents or the police, you could tell that they all had something to lose and weren’t willing to lose it, which I get. Also: you make stupid decisions when someone backs you into a corner, so I could understand some of their poorer decisions.

I really, really enjoyed Pushing Perfect. Michelle is a cracking writer, and she kept me hooked from start to finish, this is definitely a must-read, with a fantastic, never-see-coming ending.