How do you stop a runaway lie before it hurts the people you love the most? No one has ever really paid attention to Isla Gray. She's always thought of herself as "gray by name, and gray by nature." But now that she's in middle school, she wants that to change. Even though she has a loyal best friend, Saskia, she wants in with the popular crowd. She sees a way to do that with music--her mom, who had Isla on her own, has instilled in Isla a great love of 90s songs, and she and cool kid J.J. bond over them. But when another popular kid, Neena, asks what Isla's dad does, an enormous lie pops out: instead of saying she doesn't exactly have a dad, Isla says her dad is the manager of the beloved band The Hounds. Of course this impresses everyone, but then the lie keeps getting bigger and bigger... and when it inevitably implodes at a local musical festival, everyone is talking about it. But worse than the humiliation she experiences, Isla has hurt the people she cares most about. Can she find a way to make it right with Sas, J.J., and most of all, her mom?
