Miranda Bloom wants to be a writer, so she's excited to have scored one of a few coveted spots on her award-winning high school newspaper, the Ampersand. It seems like she's going to have an awesome sophomore year at "Geek High," the magnet school she attends with her two best friends, one a prank-loving video game designer and the other a budding artist. On the first day of school, she even makes a new friend -- a girl who has just moved to town. Nora seems to have so much in common with Miranda that they get close really quickly. But before long, Miranda realizes that befriending Nora was a mistake. Nora starts dressing like Miranda, joins the Ampersand as a layout artist, and tries to replace Miranda in Miranda's circle of friends. Only, everything Nora does is so subtle that Miranda sounds shallow and jealous when she tries to fight back.

The characters in REVENGE OF THE GEEK are solid, well- rounded, fun people. Miranda herself is especially realistic when dealing with the complicated emotions involved with trying to figure out if maybe she is just being jealous and her problems with Nora are all in her head -- or if her suspicions point to something real and nefarious. Nora may be the bad guy in this story, but Banks (a veteran storyteller who also writes for adults under the name Whitney Gaskell) takes the time to make this young villain sympathetic and her actions, while inexcusable, become at least understandable.

This is the fourth book in the Geek series, and while it stands alone perfectly well, readers are going to want to pick up the other three books to catch up on Miranda's complicated family life, starting with how Miranda went from hating her stepsister Hannah to becoming good enough friends with Hannah to start taking fashion advice from her.