Dirt Diary

Eighth-grader Rachel Lee has a problem: she secretly took three hundred dollars from her college fund to buy a plane ticket meant to bring her absent father home, and now she has to pay it back before her mother finds out.

The only way to earn the money fast is to help with her mom's brand-new house-cleaning business, which means scrubbing toilets in the homes of the most popular kids in school. Mortified at first, Rachel realizes that cleaning bedrooms gives her access to everyone's secrets, and she begins recording them in a diary.

When the cutest boy in school offers to pay her to spy on his girlfriend, she agrees, and her snooping quickly spins out of control, sparking rumors and damaging the very friendships she cares about.

As the lies pile up, Rachel has to confront the truth about her parents' marriage and learn that honesty with the people who matter beats any amount of dirt. Funny, warm, and grounded in real middle-school anxieties, it is a contemporary coming-of-age story about friendship, family, and owning your mistakes.