Maggie has been homeschooled most of her life. But when her mother runs off, leaving her and her brothers alone with their police officer dad, she is forced to join the ranks of schoolchildren in her town. She is now a high school student.

Along with the usual first-day-of-school jitters, Maggie has a strange problem: She’s being haunted by a ghost. She doesn't know how or why (she does eventually learn who, though: The ghost is from the 19th century).
 
Maggie soon falls in with an alt crowd and makes some fast friends. It’s here that Friends with Boys truly starts to shine, as the diverse group of teens tries to make sense of their lives and their own personalities in a way that feels honest and true to them.
 
Naturally, the backdrop is the 1980s (and a wealth of ’80s flicks). It was, after all, the best time to be a teenager.
 
“It’s easy to lose your soul in high school,” one character asserts, and you can see why it’s true. Raw emotion, betrayal, confusion, independence, and romance all collide spectacularly, and Friends with Boys delightfully captures that.