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    Harmless
    Unavailable
    Harmless
    Unavailable
    Harmless
    Audiobook5 hours

    Harmless

    Written by Dana Reinhardt

    Narrated by Lynde Houck, Donna Rawlins and Staci Snell

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    BONUS FEATURE: Exclusive Author Interview

    EMMA: Sometimes it's easier to tell lies than it is to tell the truth.
    ANNA: We could pull this one off, no problem at all.
    MARIAH: You've told lies before, haven't you? Everyone's told lies.

    One Friday night Emma, Anna, and Mariah, three best friends, are out doing something they shouldn't.
    Then a cell phone rings. One girl's mother wants to know why they aren't where they said they'd be.
    They make up a story so they won't get in trouble at home. It seems like the easy way out. What happens next challenges their friendship, their community, their relationships with their families, and their sense of themselves. What happens next shows the harm one lie can do. Told in the voices of the three girls who must learn to live with the lies they tell, Harmless is a gripping and provocative audio full of startling turns and surprises.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 6, 2007
    ISBN9780739339534
    Unavailable
    Harmless
    Author

    Dana Reinhardt

    Dana Reinhardt lives in San Francisco with her husband and their two daughters. She is the award-winning author of the young adult novels A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, Harmless, How to Build a House, The Things a Brother Knows, and The Summer I Learned to Fly and the middle-grade novel Odessa Again. Her books have been named to many best of the year lists, and reviewers have praised her work as “exceptional,” and “funny and unforgettable.” Visit her at danareinhardt.net.

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    Reviews for Harmless

    3.5/5

    120 ratings15 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      The premise for "Harmless"was great but, unfortunately, it was not well executed. The storyline was too predictable, the characters were two-dimensional and the plot dragged. Meh!
    • 2/5
      Has a good message, but I didn't like any of the characters. Kelly is reading this with her reading group at school.
    • 3/5
      Not as compelling as her debut, but still well-crafted and gripping. Adolescents caught up in a web of lies that keep spiraling about and entangling them in more and more trouble.
    • 3/5
      I have a feeling that if I were a 14 - 16 year old girl I would have eaten this book with a spoon, and as it was it was a pretty interesting little novel with a Movie of the Week feel to it.

      This cautionary tale begins with three unlikely friends in 9th grade, each of whom lie to their parents about where they are going to be when they decide to attend a high school party. To cover their tracks when they arrive home well past the time they should have they concoct a story about an attack being made on them down near a river. They become "heroes" for fighting off their would-be attacker, but after another girl is actually kidnapped and murdered -- and a suspect fitting their vague description is arrested -- things get decidedly more complicated.

      Not a smash-up read for this 50 year old, but again -- a chewy drama for the audience for whom it was intended!
    • 1/5
      mediocre - three freshman lie to cover their tracks and then the lie spirals out of control. Interesting for low-level readers because they could justify who they thought was to blame the most.
    • 3/5
      Anna and Emma have been friends since Emma moved to the neighborhood right before they were to start the third grade. In their freshman year, cool new-kid Mariah gradually becomes their friend. Mariah is dating a senior at the local public school and she invites Anna and Emma to a party at his house; they tell their parents that they are going to a movie at the college. When Emma's parents stop by the theater and discover that the girls are not there, the shit hits the fan. In order to stay out of trouble, the girls make up a story about being attacked. The lie quickly spirals out of control and gets bigger than they could ever have imagined. A suspenseful story about how a simple lie can have serious and far-reaching consequences. Recommended for teen readers.
    • 4/5
      I thought this book was a very good older young adult book. Its strengths were in the writing. The author did a great job when speaking from point of view. The characters were well written with great transistion between them. I had no problem following along the sequence of events with having three main characters. The only weakness that I saw was that of the style of writing where language was concerned. I feel that the language about sex in the story was a bit much for me to recommend to a younger high school age student.
    • 5/5
      This book sucked me in from the start. I loved the plot of it and the characters were great as well. The way that the story was told through three different narrations made it that much better and the characters of Emma, Anna and Mariah were well-developed and ever-changing.Emma was the one who came up with the story of "something bad" happening to her, as the victim. She had started out as a pretty confident, if isolated because of her best friend, young girl and ends up being the one who's remorseful and having the most trouble with the lies. From the start of each narration, all three girls say that they should/would have told the truth if they could do it again, but I believe that only Emma really would have done so, if not obvious by the way the story runs out.Anna at the beginning seems sincere, but through the eyes of Emma and Mariah, you begin to realize just how dependent she was on her friends and how much popularity means to her. From being the timid and frantic girl, she gains confidence... but not in a good way. She starts to enjoy herself and even fancies condemning an innocent man because she's finally noticed. Although Anna proclaims throughout the entire novel that she would have came out with the truth, I don't believe it. Even when the truth unraveled, you get the feeling that she's going to be the one who'll miss it the most. She was the one who ultimately ran away, unlike Emma.Mariah was a little harder to decide whether I liked her or not. But I like her complexity. She was a little poor girl, a little rich girl, and ultimately, a girl who's just confused. Although she was like Anna, enjoying the lies, she eventually gets too caught up in it and you get the feeling she wants out.I hope I didn't exactly spoil it for readers who haven't read this novel yet. It's a great read with a sense of morals behind it.
    • 4/5
      Deep subject, good for a high school book group discussion. The characters were realistic and the switching viewpoints was an effective technique.
    • 4/5
      Anna, Emma, and Mariah are three friends who create a story that will change their lives. Told from the point of view of three protagonists, the author reminds us that even small lies can seem harmless can, in fact, be very dangerous.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      There was a man. He had a knife. He attacked us down by the river.It was just a harmless little lie that Anna, Emma and Mariah tell to their parents to explain why they're late getting home. They hope their parents anger at them missing curfew will be replaced with worry. They just have to stand by it. No matter what. Suddenly the police are involved, and the town demands that someone be punished. And then, suddenly, there is a man who is arrested and accused of a crime that never happened. Will the girls continue to stand by their story?Small word of warning - due to the mention of sex and drinking, this is more suited to those who are over twelve.
    • 3/5
      This novel is told from the perspective of three high school girls, Anna, Mariah, and Emma. These girls, totally different in experience and personality, become friends and battle what becomes their deep, dark secret. Anna lives a life according to how her parents want her to live it. She never dares to make a decision that would go against their standards. She is an only child which means her parents have more than enough time to devote their attention to her. Although Anna doesn’t find this a problem, she finds it hard to fit in. Before high school, Emma was in the same situation. Living a lifestyle planned out by her parents wasn’t exactly what she’s had in mind. She’s beginning to test her limits, and even rebel a little. What was the cause of the sudden behavior change? Easy, her name is Mariah. Mariah is a “goddess” amongst her fellow classmates. She can get any boy, pull off any look, and is insanely popular. She frightens the upperclassman girls, and wins the hearts of the upperclassman boys. She even has her own boyfriend that goes to a different school, and can drive. Oddly, these girls become best friends. That’s when the trouble begins. It starts off with one white lie and escalades into a series of bigger lies, until finally, the lie that changes their whole life around.
    • 3/5
      I found this a very compelling story -- one that should have a great deal of teen appeal: They should enjoy reading about situations that have so much familiarity to them. The book was somewhat ill-served by the audio version: I loved the three voices, but didn't like the individual readers. They all sounded old, and the narrators portraying Anna and Emma were too similar.
    • 5/5
      When Anna, Emma and Mariah tell a "harmless" lie to keep from getting in trouble with their parents, the whole thing spins out of control