Gail Giles’s Shattering Glass is one of those books that has a slow beginning, but becomes a very quick read just a few chapters in. This is a story about taking a nobody and making them a somebody and then it all backfiring. This book was an award nominee for the Georgia Peach Book Award for Honor book (2005), Abraham Lincoln Award (2007), and the Missouri Gateway Readers Award (2005)

The way the story goes is that Rob Haynes, a boy who isn’t who he says he is and someone his friends don’t really know, tries to take Simon Glass, the school joke, and make him popular. Until Simon goes too far and he tries to take Rob’s spot as #1. Then Rob, Young, and Bobster take everything too far. In the process, they destroy the future of one of their best friends, Coop.

In my opinion, one of the best parts of the story is when Simon, a virtual nobody, makes Lance Ansley, #2 in the social ladder, behind Rob that is, look like a total and complete jerk. All of this happened in front of the whole school one morning. By simply being himself and letting Lance prey on him like he usually would. When it’s all over, Rob hatches his “plan”, and everything goes into motion. They make friends with Simon. They make him sit with them at lunch, and they hang out, go to the mall, do what normal high school boys would do. Unbenounced to everyone except Rob, this is all a set up.

I recommend this book to anyone who like realistic stories about high school life. Even though this story takes a lot of the aspects of the life of a high schooler and takes and cranks them up to 11.