Skin Deep

Andrea Anderson watches high school the way a theatergoer watches a play. She can predict the popular kids, the outcasts, the rivalries, and how each storyline will end. In the school's social ranking she counts for nothing, and at home her mother makes every decision. Her days follow a script, and she rarely deviates from it.

That changes when Andrea takes a paid job caring for Honora Menapace, a neighbor who keeps to herself and is now ill. The duties seem simple: tend Honora's garden, finish her pottery, and feed her dog, Zena. Yet the work pulls Andrea out of her quiet spot on the sidelines and into the middle of things she never expected to face.

As the story unfolds, Andrea's assumptions about right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, and who deserves admiration begin to crumble. The novel explores appearances, self-perception, and the gap between how things look and what they truly are, told through a teenage girl who must learn to see for herself.