What does it mean to do wrong, when no one punishes you? A smart and unflinching look at friendship, the nature of entitlement, and growing up in the heartland.

Paige Sheridan has the perfect life. She's pretty, rich, and popular, and her spot on the homecoming court is practically guaranteed. But when a night of partying ends in an it-could-have-been-so-much worse crash, everything changes. Her best friends start ignoring her, her boyfriend grows cold and distant, and her once-adoring younger sister now views her with contempt. The only bright spot is her creative writing class, led by a charismatic new teacher who encourages students to be true to themselves. But who is Paige, if not the homecoming princess everyone expects her to be? In this arresting and witty debut, a girl who was once high-school royalty must face a truth that money and status can't fix, and choose between living the privileged life of a princess, or owning up to her mistakes and giving up everything she once held dear.
"I'd always taken my life for granted, assumed that the path I'd been traveling was absolutely the correct one. Never gave it a second thought, until last spring. But after the accident, and a summer away, it all seemed narrower than I'd remembered, harder to navigate."
I finished this book, and the first thing I did was recommend it to several of my friends with whom I generally do not share books. You guys might have noticed that I tend to read the fantasy-type books, but I picked this book off the shelf because it looked like an interesting concept, and I ended up reading it late into the night when I really should have been sleeping.
The Princesses of Iowa was stunningly well-written and the characters were very realistic. I would absolutely love to have met Shanti and Ethan in real life. Shanti was actually my favorite character throughout the book, though Mirror (also known as Miranda) was also really great. And Paige, well, I think I would like who she ended up being once she got her head out of the ‘Princess’ game.
Paige’s voice was in my head the entire time I was reading this, which is the mark of a great author. At first, I thought it was just going to be another story about the privileged girl who got everything she wanted, bullying her way to the top, but as soon as the creative writing class started, I started to realize she was more than she seemed. The writing exercises that she did really helped us to get into her head, and helped to show how she was changing from the inside out.
I couldn’t stand Lacey, Jake, or any of the other athletic boys. They were everything that I hated about the popular kids at my high school, and even more homophobic, which I wasn’t sure was possible. I wanted to shake them and attempt to bring them to the realization that they were not the top dogs of the world, whatever their coaches and parents had told them. In the real world, you have to work for what you want, not just go to football practice and get away with everything else because of it. Like, I get that your parents molded you into this, but like Paige said to Jake in the end, you do have your own choices in the matters at hand, no matter what your parents teach you.
I also really enjoyed the LGBTQ positive themes in this, even though I kind of expected there to be a trial and issues, but Mr. Tremont was able to calm everybody down, even though he wished he could have been there as a teacher. In an age where it seems everyone’s ready to drop a lawsuit, it was nice to see a character who wasn’t entirely obsessed with the lawsuit, and even though he was upset to be fired, filing a claim was not his priority. That being said, there really should have been, in my honest opinion. Not only was the reason for his termination a lie, it was also serious discrimination, though if it had been the truth it would be a reasonable reason for termination. Mr. Tremont was the kind of writing teacher that I wish I’d had in high school, or even in college. I might even try some of the writing exercises again.
My final rating for this book is five stars, and I definitely recommend it to people who enjoy mature, contemporary young adult literature. Some other recommendations for those who enjoyed this book are Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zebin and Dead Poet’s Society by N.H. Kleinbaum.