Betty Lee, Sophomore

What if the hardest lessons in life aren't learned in classrooms, but in the hallways between classes? Betty Lee is back for her sophomore year, and nothing feels quite the same anymore. After a summer of change, she returns to find her friendships shifted, like tectonic plates moving beneath the surface, creating fault lines she didn't ask for. Her best friends Kathryn and Carolyn are pulling in different directions, and a new presence has arrived: Lucia Coletti, a countess's daughter whose European polish and old-world glamour threaten to upend the fragile social order Betty thought she understood. Grove writes with sharp precision about the anxieties that simmer just beneath adolescent politeness. The jealousy between friends, the fear of being left out, the desperate need to belong, these tensions crackle through every conversation. Betty must figure out who she is when her world is no longer simple, when loyalty gets complicated, and when the friends she's had forever suddenly feel like strangers. It's a portrait of growing up that remains startlingly honest a century later, capturing that painful moment when you realize people change and you might have to change too.