A Review of Friend or Fiction

NOTE: I received a free Advanced Reader Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Here goes...

Jade, a sixth-grader and aspiring author, has gone through a few best friends. Nobody seems to stay long in her tiny Colorado town – in fact, Jade has lived there longer than practically anyone else she knows. Jade hasn’t had a best friend in a while, or even really a friend. So, she dreams up Zoe. Zoe is fun, optimistic, popular, basically an ideal best friend – and Jade’s best friend. Zoe only exists in Jade’s imagination and the pages of her notebook, but thanks to a strange classmate and some magical pond water, Zoe is brought to life. But Zoe’s existence as a real person brings its own problems, problems that Jade will have to face…

Overall, this was a great book. It was a bit predictable (for me, at least), but I enjoyed it just the same. There were some formatting issues in my ARC (they didn’t get in the way too much, though), so I hope those will be fixed before the book is published. Some of the more surprising consequences of Zoe’s real-life existence were fun to read about. The book’s more emotional nature arises through Jade’s relationship with her family, especially her father, who has cancer. With a premise that readers will love, a narration from its protagonist that provides the general feel of an 11-year-old wannabe writer, and plenty of touching moments to boot, this book truly shines.