As her sophomore year of high school begins, Jess is suddenly having trouble fitting in to the school scene.  She never had problems like this before, but her best friends Bizza and Char have turned into too-cool punk wannabes overnight and now Jess feels completely and utterly alone.  It's time to reinvent herself and join a new group of friends.  But will she choose the math crowd, the band crowd, or even the Dungeons & Dragons crowd?  Which of these cliques will accept her?  Where will Jess really fit in?  And can Jess hang out with the D&D crowd without their dorkiness rubbing off on her?

Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern is one of the smartest and funniest books I've read in a long time, and that's part of the reason that it was such an enjoyable read.  But the other reason that this book stayed with me long after I put it down was that it also included some serious discussions about friendship, loyalty, selfishness, and betrayal.  At the beginning of the book Jess seems kind of one-dimensional, but the more she learns about the girls she used to call her friends and the more she learns about the people who might be her friends in the future, the more she grows as a character.  Reading this book will make you grow with her, and it will also make you wish that Jess was a real person so that you could be her friend, too.