The Market, by J.M. Steele
Reviewed by Mckayla, age 15, Canada
The Market is about a girl named Kate Winthrop in her last year of high school at Millbank High. Throughout her four years attending Millbank she is determined to become one of the Proud Crowd members, a group of girls who are popular and rich, and to date the most popular guy in school, Will B. After attending one of Gretchen's parties (Gretchen is the leader of the Proud Crowd), and being called out as number "seventy-one", Kate wonders what this number means and why they would call her that.
After a few days of asking around, Kate comes home to find a message on her computer giving her the web address and password to a website called "The Market". After looking at it, Kate soon realizes that all the names of the 140 girls in her class are on this website. All the girls are ranked by their looks, friends, etc. Kate is number seventy-one. After telling her best friends Dev and Callie, who are also included on the website, they make a plan to give Kate a new look to make her become number one on the ranking list. What was a game now becomes an obsession for Kate, ruining friendships and relationships.
I think The Market's moral is to be yourself, and not change because of what others think of you. The book follows an interesting story line, and it's a good read, but is somewhat repetitive in some places. Kate also changes her mind about a lot of things; this is where the repetitive stuff comes in. If you get annoyed very easily with repetitive things then this may not be a good read for you. Overall the book is well written, and includes many things that girls can relate to. I would definitely read another book by J.M. Steele.
I give this book 3.5 stars (of a possible five).
