Reviews

I loved this book. Loved it. I won't reveal major plot details, but the next bit is a tad spoiler-y, I guess.

To me, this book was an allegory about sexism and its effects on women both grown and growing, and I think its spot-on supernatural elements are meant to be metaphorical. Throughout history, women who refuse to conform to societal expectations have been slapped with the label "witch", so I thought the elements of witchcraft in this book served a specific purpose. After all, what's really so extraordinary about Julia, Holly, Selena, and Becca, other than that they refuse to play the game? They're dangerous precisely because they've chosen to make their friendships and their senses of self more important than the constant messages of conformity they're bombarded with. (There is a caveat to this, but you'll have to read to figure out what it is.)

Antoinette is the grown-up symbol of this bucking of conventions. There's a passage where Stephen thinks that her life on the squad would be so much easier if she'd just go with the flow a bit -- but he doesn't stop to ask himself at what cost.

For all the female characters, the price is too steep all around. Choosing not to conform also comes at a cost -- namely in their inability to trust men. None of the teenagers can, and neither can Antoinette. They've all tried to harden themselves, to the point where they can no longer trust in a man's good intentions because they fear those men will destroy them. But the inability to trust also costs them. It makes them cynical, chips away at their confidence, their faith in good things, to the extent that some of them may ultimately be destroyed.

As for the mean girl element, I had sympathy for them too. They try to navigate the world according to a rulebook that's stacked against them. No matter how well they play the game, it's rigged, and they'll fail. I think it's a sense of desperation that drives them and makes them hate Julia and company. First, because Julia and her friends break rules they're too afraid to break, and second because abiding by the rules didn't guarantee them success. Having bought into the fallacy that it will, they dig in tooth and nail to preserve their own senses of self.

In a word, I thought this book was brilliant, and I could see a lot of parallels between it and the previous, which also had a strong theme of characters fighting to maintain their image. In fact, I think at heart this series deals very compellingly and convincingly with the lengths people will go to in order to preserve their image.