Shattered Glass by Gail Giles

Wow. This book begins with a powerful sentence: the first person narrator admits to murdering a fellow high school student. The rest of the book fills in the story of how it happened. This is a good "boy" book since the main characters would appeal to boy readers. The narrator and his friends are in the popular group at school, but their leader, Rob, is a machiavellian type. He decides to take the class geek (whose name is Glass) and turn him into the most popular kid in school. His motivation is unclear, but the other boys follow him like he is the Pied Piper. That's the disturbing part: the mob mentality and the unseen sinister side to their leader is unsettling to say the least. The narrator is presented as flawed, as well. He understands he should not follow Rob blindly, but he cannot help himself. You want to take all these boys out back and box their ears. But life isn't like that. The bad guys sometimes get away with things. Anyone will find this book intriguing.