Beautiful, by Amy Reed, is a great book about a young girl dealing with the pressure of growing up.

When Cassie moves to a new school, she quickly gains the nickname “Beautiful.” With her new name comes a new identity, she decides to stop being a “good girl.” Cassie makes a new best friend with one of the most popular girls in the seventh grade, Alex. Unfortunately, Alex’s popularity is due partly to her drug use and sexual activity. Initially, Cassie enjoys the newfound friends and all the attention she gets by hanging with Alex.  But after awhile,  their friendship takes a turn for the worse and Alex begins to become both verbally and physically abusive. 

Cassie feels stuck in this relationship because she has isolated herself from all the positive people in her life and her home life is less than ideal.

At home, her parents are terrifying.  Her father is emotionally unstable and her mother is an alcoholic that never really pays attention to her.

The book ends with loss and pain, but there is some sort of hope for Cassie.  It is a great read and very interesting. 

This book is a perfect match to fans of Ellen Hopkins, the author of Crank.  Warning- it has some pretty mature content because of the language, drugs and sexual content, but Reed handles it in a realistically appropriate way.