I had a shaky start with this one. Lara Zany is the official "friendship matchmaker" at her school. She comes across as sincerely wanting to help others make friends, yet she's got a misguided list of "rules" about how to make and keep friends in school. She's not very likable at first, but I have to admit, by the end - when she learns a thing or two about how to really make friends - I was glad everything worked out for her.
I'm always on the lookout for diversity in books, so I'll mention that this book happens to have a character named Emily Wong. She is the new girl in school who just happens to be Chinese. She is an independent-minded individual and is immediately skeptical of Lara's "rules". Again, she was strangely not entirely likable. I liked her confidence and sense of self, but she kind of bordered on impertinent.
Finally, I was a little put off by how the characters in this book were meant to be 7th graders. They actually seemed to behave more like 5th or 6th graders to me. It's weird, because I just read another book about 5th graders who seemed more like 7th graders to me!
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