Shatering Glass by Gale Giles

  "Have you ever done things your friends wanted to do, knowing inside that it is the wrong thing to do or at the very least, it could get you into trouble? Have you ever seen things start to go bad, but you can't seem to figure out why or how to stop it from happening? In Shattering Glass, Rob, the new guy at school, uses his charm and charisma as a master manipulator to root out the most popular guy at school taking his position and stealing his girlfriend. But even this does not satisfy Rob’s desire to rule the school. He decides to demonstrate his power by helping the class pencil pocket become cool.   Rob and his friends set out on the mission to make Simon Glass not only accepted but revered. What they don’t expect is Simon to actually be intelligent, maybe even more than them. As things start to go terribly wrong, no one seems to be able to stop it before it goes too far ... or maybe they really didn't want to stop it."-Blurb


 Shattering Glass by Gail Giles is full of lies and deception, false appearances and murder. The ending and read along aftermath makes the feeling worse and more disturbing than anything I have ever read.

    There are many other books that show teenagers killing their own. The classic high school "it was all a joke that went wrong" scenario. But this shows the disturbing truth, just like "Give a Boy a Gun" based on the Columbine Massacre, and it keeps you interested but you will be only saddened by the end of the book.

(read from page one) "Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was too much to pick from.   I guess, really we each hated him for a different reason, but we didn't realize it until the day we killed him."  

You see, it all seemed like a good idea when it first started.  Even the principal was all for it.  The the most popular boy in school, Rob Haynes, had a plan to take the biggest geek in the school and make him popular.

By reading the quotes you know there will be no shock that Simon dies but it constantly makes you ask "what happened when he died?" and almost disturbingly gets you interested.

 I found out Gale Giles was also a former substitute teacher who actually understands the social events that happen in a high school. Best of all, the book never falls into that old trap of an adult writing for teens and including lots of "hip" teen slang. The closest this book ever comes to slang is the occasional "Yo!". I can live with that. In the end, "Shattering Glass" deserves its praise. It may not be the nicest book about teen popularity out there, but it's certainly not the cruelest.