i've never read anything by susan juby before, though we do have all of her books at the library. but when this one came in i thought it looked kind of fun so i took it home. it's a fairly thick little book, a good 341 pages long, but it's light reading and i finished it in an evening sitting on the couch waiting for g. to get home from work.
sherman mack is a bit of a nerd, though he fancies himself a real ladies' man. much of his life is devoted to trying to make the women/girls around him feel good, and helping them out in anyway he can. sherman really is a nice guy, even if his somewhat overuse of the terms "mack daddy" (does anyone actually say that anymore?) and "the ladies" (ew) does get a little tiresome at times. however, nice guys aren't necessarily the popular guys, and such is the case with sherm.
when sherman starts grade 9 at harewood high he becomes aware of the school's sick tradition of "defiling" girls. when a girl is "defiled" her picture is stuck in all of the bathrooms with a big "D" on it, and from that point onward she is a social pariah, and can expect all sorts of rumours of the most heinous sort to be spread about her. sherman believes that his current crush interest is in grave danger of being the next girl to be d-listed, and so he vows to do everything in his power to find out who is behind the defilings and expose the truth.
armed with his friend vanessa's detective books, a talent for cookery, and a team of devoted if somewhat inept friends, sherman may have just what it takes to bring justice to the halls of harewood high.
