A thoughtful, sensitively drawn examination of bullying, revenge, and personal responsibility.
In Andrefski’s (The Girlfriend Request, 2016, etc.) novel, a bullied teen at an elite private school plots revenge against her tormentors during recruitment week for a secret society.
The last day of school at Trinity Junior Academy is a day of celebration for Samantha Evans. She’s excited about beginning high school in the fall with her best friends, Jessica and Jeremy. That same day, though, everything changes when her father is arrested for insider trading. Compounding the shock is the discovery that he’s having an affair with Jessica’s mother. Eventually, her father is convicted and both couples divorce. Samantha is sent to live with her Aunt Loretta and attends high school at Trinity Academy, where Jessica begins tormenting her. When Samantha discovers graffiti mocking her father’s imprisonment, she feels that the time has come to exact revenge on Jessica and her friends, and the selection process for the school’s secretive Musterian Society provides the perfect opportunity. After Samantha hacks into the society’s website, she sends invitations to three unsuspecting classmates along with details of various tasks they’ll need to complete during Rush Week. Her plan seems foolproof until the pranks take a dangerous turn and she wonders if her desire for vengeance is worth risking her classmates’ safety or her friendship with Jeremy. Andrefski’s exploration of the ramifications of bullying is compelling and includes a well-developed storyline with a strong heroine. Samantha is an intelligent student who balances her school responsibilities with serious family turmoil, including her aunt’s dementia; she also attempts to reconcile with Jessica to no avail and faces daily reminders of her father’s crimes and affair. The scenes of bullying are brief but effectively convey Samantha’s emotional trauma and establish her motivation for revenge. Her scheme unfolds like an intricately plotted thriller, with the pace quickening as her plans start to unravel. Andrefski also skillfully weaves several effective subplots into the main narrative, including Samantha’s relationship with a mysterious older teen named Ransom.
A thoughtful, sensitively drawn examination of bullying, revenge, and personal responsibility.Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63375-318-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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