Backlash

The novel, told through four alternating perspectives, opens with Lara Kelley, a fifteen-year-old sophomore, reading a devastating public Facebook post from Christian DeWitt, a boy she has been chatting with online for two months. Christian calls her an awful person and a loser, declaring he would never take her to his school dance. When Lara messages him privately, Christian responds that "the world would be a better place without you in it" (2), then blocks her.

The perspective shifts to Lara's younger sister, Sydney, an eighth grader annoyed that Lara is monopolizing the bathroom the night before Sydney's audition for the school musical. When Lara fails to respond to repeated banging, Sydney alerts their mother, Kathy Kelley, a city councilwoman. Kathy cannot open the locked door, and Sydney calls 911, revealing that Lara has a history of depression and past suicidal comments. When police and EMTs open the door, Sydney glimpses pill bottles lined up on the bathtub's edge.

Next door, Bree Connors, Lara's former best friend, hears the sirens and knows they are for Lara. When Lara is wheeled out alive on a stretcher, Bree photographs the scene and posts the images to Facebook, despite her younger brother Liam's horrified protests. The post quickly accumulates over 100 likes and cruel comments.

At the hospital, Sydney's father, Pete, an engineer, cannot understand why Lara would do this when she had recently made the varsity cheerleading team and seemed happy. Officer Hall takes Sydney aside, and Sydney reveals that Lara was severely bullied about her weight in middle school and had spoken about wanting to die. When Lara regains consciousness, Pete asks why. She whispers a single word: "Christian."

Pete begins an obsessive investigation, creating spreadsheets cross-referencing commenters on Lara's wall with Christian's friend list. After two weeks in a psychiatric ward, Lara comes home under strict observation: All doors must remain open, medication is locked away, and she has no internet or phone access without supervision. She watches children's television and struggles with the daily gratitude list assigned by her psychiatrist. When Pete tries to show her his printed spreadsheet at the hospital, she rips it up and becomes hysterical. At home, he continues pressing her to review it, but Lara refuses each time, triggering family arguments.

Detectives visit the Kelley home and reveal that Christian DeWitt does not exist: The profile was deleted after Lara's hospitalization, no such student attends East River High, and the profile photos belong to an Abercrombie & Fitch model named Adam Bernard who has no knowledge of the account. Lara is shattered, realizing she tried to kill herself over someone who was never real.

Part Two shifts to two months earlier. Bree, who has years of cheerleading camp and a season on JV behind her, is considering skipping varsity tryouts for the dance team. Her mother, Mary Jo, a real estate broker who never made her own high school cheerleading squad, reacts with fury. When results are posted, Lara makes varsity and Bree does not. Bree sees Lara celebrating and interprets a glance in her direction as mockery. She vows revenge.

That evening, Bree creates a fake Facebook profile for a fictional boy named Christian DeWitt, using photos of the Abercrombie model and giving him interests that overlap with Lara's. She places him at East River High. Once Christian has accumulated 150 friends, Bree sends a friend request to Lara. Lara, thrilled that such a handsome boy would notice her, accepts despite her parents' rules against friending strangers. Christian initiates a chat, complimenting Lara on making cheerleading and calling her pretty.

Over several weeks, Bree flirts with Lara as Christian, hinting about inviting her to homecoming. Bree grows bored and lets her friend Marci Liptak in on the secret; Marci helps write messages and mocks Lara's dress choices. One evening, Mary Jo catches Bree chatting as Christian. Instead of punishing her, Mary Jo laughs, asks for a turn at the keyboard, and types a romantic message to Lara, expressing satisfaction at taking the Kelleys down a peg. Bree feels hollow despite her mother's approval. Meanwhile, Sydney and Liam reconnect, bonding in the old tree fort in the Connors' backyard over their shared frustrations as overlooked younger siblings.

When Bree reads a message in which Lara insults her for glaring after cheerleading results were posted, she decides to end the prank publicly. She writes a cruel post on Lara's wall as Christian. Lara reads the post and the final private message, then retreats to the bathroom, locks the door, and swallows every pill she can find.

Part Three returns to the present. Police trace the fake profile's IP address to the Connors' neighborhood. Mary Jo instructs Bree to say nothing, but when confronted with evidence, Bree confesses that she created the profile and that both Mary Jo and Marci also participated. When Mary Jo learns Bree confessed, she responds: "Can't I trust you to do anything right, Breanna?" (209).

The fallout is severe. Pete storms out in his pajamas to confront Mary Jo and is cited for disorderly conduct. The local paper brands Mary Jo and Bree a mother-daughter bullying team, and national news labels Mary Jo a monster mom. Reporters besiege both houses, death threats flood in, and Bree's phone is hacked. At school, Bree is ostracized; Marci turns on her after the police make contact. Liam is attacked in a school bathroom by students targeting him as Bree's brother.

Amid the chaos, Lara's recovery slowly takes shape. Luis, a friend who visits Lara at home with yellow tulips remembering they are her favorite, provides one of the first moments of genuine laughter since her attempt. In therapy, Lara admits that Christian made her feel special and worth something. She is furious when she discovers Kathy has been speaking to national media about cyberbullying legislation she calls Lara Laws without consulting Lara first. After seeing Sydney and Liam together and initially feeling betrayed, Lara reflects on her own failures as a friend. She surprises everyone at dinner by defending Sydney and Liam's relationship to their parents, then genuinely apologizes to Sydney for the first time for the disruption and pain she has caused. Sydney, stunned, accepts.

Bree transfers to West Lake High, joins the dance team in defiance of Mary Jo's wishes, and dyes her hair black to shed her identity. Her father, Sean, discovers she has been cutting her forearm and arranges family therapy, telling her that asking for help is a sign of strength.

The epilogue jumps forward 12 months. Kathy agrees to rename the legislation Bullying in Cyberspace, or BIC Laws, allowing both mother and daughter to heal. Lara returns to school, using Pete's spreadsheet, which she finally reviewed in therapy, to identify which seemingly friendly classmates participated in the cruelty. At a football game, she encounters Bree in a bathroom line; they exchange brief pleasantries, but Lara's central question of why Bree did it remains unanswered. Luis asks Lara to the homecoming dance. She panics and refuses at first but later accepts, recognizing this as a step toward trusting someone real. In her room, she destroys the printed chat in which the fictional Christian told her he loved her and throws the fragments in the garbage. Her final gratitude entry affirms she is grateful the pills did not work, that she grows a little stronger each day, and that she gets the chance to try again.