I am not surprised that this book is a best seller. It is paced well and rife with indulgent teen fantasies- getting rich, going shopping, having wealthy dapper hotties swoon at your feet, making grades so good teachers think you are cheating, showing em' all- in this regard it is a nice bit of escapism. It is also a paean to the shallowest values of american society through tic toc.
The puzzles our heroine must solve are cute, and she is not a terrible heroine by any means.
I feel like this entire story was informed with a lot of good market research.
It is, however, so stupidly unrealistic that I could not stop rolling my eyes. And the whole Emily plot line just did not work for me as it seemed to unravel clumsily and was not convincing. The characters are predictable. But that is okay, it is a book for kids not adults. I would still recommend it to teenagers, but for older, cerebral teens or adults not so much.