HOW TO MAKE OUT

Sixteen-year-old Renley needs three thousand dollars for the math club’s trip to New York City, and she knows exactly how to get it: she’s going to start a how-to blog where people pay for answers to all of life’s questions from a “certified expert.”

Problems with the plan: 1) She doesn’t know how to do anything but long division and calculus, and 2) She’s totally invisible to people at school. And not in a cool Gossip Girl kind of way. So, she decides to learn to do . . . well . . . everything. When her anonymous blog shifts in a more scandalous direction and the questions (and money) start rolling in, she has to learn not just how to do waterfall braids and cat-eye makeup, but a few other things — like how to cure a hangover, how to flirt, and how to make out (something her very experienced, and very in-love-with-her neighbor, Drew, is more than willing to help with). As her blog’s reputation skyrockets, so does “new and improved” Renley’s popularity. She’s not only nabbed the attention of the entire school, but also the eye of Seth Levine, the hot culinary wizard she’s admired from across the home-ec classroom all year. Soon, caught up in the thrill of popularity both in and out of cyberspace, her secrets start to spiral, and she finds that she’s forgotten the most important how-to: how to be herself. When her online and real lives converge, Renley will have to make a choice: lose everything she loves in her new life, or everyone she loves in the life she left behind. Brianna Shrum has been writing since she could scrawl letters and has worked with teens since she graduated, either in the writing classes she taught or within youth groups. Brianna digs all things YA, as well as all things geeky, superhero-y, gamer-y, magical, and strange. She lives in Englewood, Colorado, with her high-school-sweetheart-turned-husband and her two little boys.