Seventeen-year-old Ida Carter, who\u2019s Black and bisexual, understands that beauty is currency. As the vice president of Banneker High\u2019s Black Student Union, Ida is \u201cBlack popular.\u201d She\u2019s earned respect among the few Black students at her predominantly white school, but she\u2019s nowhere near the top of the overall social hierarchy, and she\u2019s not considered desirable by the white majority. When a crude list ranking the school\u2019s hottest girls starts making the rounds, Ida isn\u2019t surprised to find that Black and brown girls are excluded\u2014even Ashley Beckett, the ultra-feminine Black co-captain of the girls\u2019 tennis team, who only dates the \u201cWASPiest, palest white boys,\u201d is missing. The BSU members decide to publicly condemn the list by championing a Black girl to run for prom queen, and they settle on a reluctant Ida. As Ida navigates her campaign, she encounters an even greater threat than her competition. Someone is physically harming the other prom queen candidates on the list. Can Ida find the culprit before she\u2019s next? While the premise echoes classic teen slashers, the narrative fails to deliver a satisfying third-act resolution. Travis realistically depicts themes of colorism, racism, interracial dating, identity, and misogyny, but these topics would have benefitted from clearer, more focused treatment. The family dynamics are refreshingly uplifting, however, thanks to Ida\u2019s openly supportive parents. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seventeen-year-old Ida Carter, who\u2019s Black and bisexual, understands that beauty is currency. As the vice president of Banneker High\u2019s Black Student Union, Ida is \u201cBlack popular.\u201d She\u2019s earned respect among the few Black students at her predominantly white school, but she\u2019s nowhere near the top of the overall social hierarchy, and she\u2019s not considered desirable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6907"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}