Cara has never been one of those girls: confident, self-possessed, and always ready with the perfect thing to say. A girl at the very top of the popularity tower. One of the Populazzi.

Now, junior year could change everything. Cara’s moving to a new school, and her best friend urges her to seize the moment—with the help of the Ladder. Its rungs are relationships, and if Cara transforms into the perfect girlfriend for guys ever-higher on the tower, she’ll reach the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi.

The Ladder seems like a lighthearted social experiment, a straight climb up, but it quickly becomes gnarled and twisted. And when everything goes wrong, only the most audacious act Cara can think of has a chance of setting things even a little bit right.

• A High School Social Experiment: Cara’s best friend presents the Ladder—a plan to date her way up the popularity tower by becoming the perfect girlfriend for a series of increasingly popular guys.
• Reinventing Yourself: After a mortifying kindergarten incident defined her social life, a new school is Cara’s one chance to leave her awkward past behind and become a confident, self-possessed “Supreme Populazzi.”
• A Cinderella Story with a Twist: Instead of a fairy godmother, Cara has a binder full of research. Instead of a prince, she has a list of targets. But this social climbing scheme quickly proves to be anything but a fairy tale.
• An Unexpected First Target: The plan starts with Archer, a witty theater geek who wasn’t supposed to be anything more than the first rung on the ladder... but some rules are made to be broken.