Harmless by Dana Reinhardt

Mark Twain once wrote the only difference between a cat and a lie is that a cat has just nine lives.  In Harmless by Dana Reinhardt, three friends (Emma, Anna, and Mariah), who are freshmen girls at a private school, tell their parents a lie so that they can spend the night with three senior boys from the public high school.  That lie worked so well they tell another lie that is seemingly simple by comparison-- that they're attending a Jane Austen film at the local theater, when in fact they're back with the senior boys.  This works out fine until Anna's parents decide to see the same film at the same time and realize the girls aren't there.  Rather than fess up to the truth, the girls decide to lie again.  This time they make up a story about the three of them being down by the river when a mysterious man attacked Emma, but Anna and Mariah fought him off and they all ran to safety.  The story grows and spreads and takes on-- as Twain so aptly put it-- lives of its own.  The girls find themselves in a moral dilemna they never imagined possible when they made up a harmless lie.  The story builds as we hear from each girl in the first person, so we get the inner thoughts of each girl throughout the book. 
Harmless is a cautionary tale about the power of words and trust, or alternately the power of lies and what people choose to believe.   What I liked about the book was the very different voices each of the characters have, however the quickly alternating narrative was a bit hard to handle in such a short work.  This is a cautionary tale of the evil that can come of something as harmless as a little lie, and should have some appeal at the high school level.  I wouldn't recommend this title below high school because of the drinking and sex that occur early on, although I don't think either are substantial enough to warrant concern in high school as long as the mentions are taken in context.