Friday Memes: Doreen by Ilana Manaster

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader and Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

Doreen by Ilana Manaster. 333 p. RP Teens/ Running Press, June 7, 2016. 9780762459629.

Publisher synopsis: If Doreen Gray were to take a selfie upon her arrival at the elite Chandler Academy, it would capture a face marked with acne, a head full of frizz, and eyes looking anywhere but at the lens.

What Chandler queen bee Heidi Whelan sees is a desperate hunger for acceptance and the makings of a willing and useful protégé. Heidi’s roommate, Biz Gibbons-Brown, works her Photoshop magic to create a stunning profile pic of Doreen—a glossy, digital makeover that Doreen initially rejects . . . only to wake up the next morning transformed as the girl in the picture.

But Doreen quickly becomes accustomed to her newfound power and lives without considering consequences of her actions. Only the picture knows the truth, and she will do anything to protect her secret.

In this sharp, scandal-filled retelling of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, the men of nineteenth-century London become three girls of twentyfirst-century New England.

First line: The charms of late summer seemed a very humdrum topic of an imagination as wild as Heidi Whelan's, but she nonetheless found herself, on the first day of her last year at Handler Academy, laid across a leather love seat in the sitting room of her suite, eating pistachios and feeling rather satisfied by the green an blue and pink of things as she peered out onto the as-yet unpopulated quad.

Page 56: Heidi had everything to lose, and just as he'd had the power to give it, Roland could take it all away, on a whim. No. Doreen was entirely too risky. It was stupid. Heidi needed to stay focused, get into college, Ivy League, the best. Forget about Roland, forget about Doreen and move on. That was all there was to it.

But she was so lonely.