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A review by caughtbetweenpages
Perfect Girl by Tracy Banghart
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
Perfect Girl is a fast-paced YA thriller great for readers who want to see an inversion of the Final Girl trope. In addition, the narrative is an exploration of femininity and the societal expectations placed on young girls, and the way those expectations fail girls when things get dangerous: what happens when a girl socialized to be docile and demure is put into a situation where survival depends on her fighting? Perfect Girl combines classic YA themes of discovering one's own identity and puts it on a clock, which our protagonist Jessa can't afford to let run out.
I really enjoyed Perfect Girl's atmosphere. The environment around Jessa and her friends acted as threat and impediment as the story went on, but also set a tense, frightening emotional mood. I found the storm to be a useful tool to remove the modern day crutch of cell phones as an avenue for communication. The way it was introduced was clever and didn't feel like authorial hand so much as natural consequence to the actions set forth by the plot prior, actions which would've been innocent and harmless under different circumstances. I also loved the themes brought up by Perfect Girl; the entitlement of patriarchy is one of my favorite threats to explore in a story. In classic thriller fashion, I found it to strike the exact balance of over-the-top but technically believable/possible, which is always fun and helps keep the pages turning. I also like what Banghart did in terms of grounding the story in a specific time; the COVID19 pandemic is real and it happened and it's interesting to see the way the anxieties around illness and memories of masking were tackled in a story about kids whose educations and senses of safety were interrupted by this global phenomenon.
My main problem with Perfect Girl is this: there was one girl too many in the main narrative. I understand Banghart's desire to depict multiple avenues of girlhood and the ways that societal pressures manifest differently in each. However, in the attempt to do this, each girl ended up feeling unidimensional and underexplored: Alexis the Closeted Queer Athlete, Kellan the Outspoken Social Media Queen, Tiny the Troubled One, and Jessa the Quiet Academic. The greatest downfall of this choice is that the narrative didn't get to explore the ways that varying pressures often intersect. I found myself thinking about how much more nuanced and interesting each girl's personal arc would be if they just blended some of their characteristics. What if Jessa had been a closeted lesbian? David's desire to possess her and disregard for her autonomy would have gained additional dimension by intersecting Jessa's femaleness with her disinterest in existing as an object of male desire. And what if Kellan, the former star of a family social media page, was also a woman of color? Her pushback against both her mother's and her audience's expectations of her existence as a product rather than a person would have been more interesting to explore, I think.
In terms of just moving the plot along, I found that one of the quartet of best friends was often missing from the narrative altogether, and in such a way as though she took no action outside of the scene on page (or even worse, while she was on page). When her best friends were all kidnapped, I'm expected to believe Kellan would be making out with an annoying boy? And Alexis's role in also being in the creepy dollhouse basement seemed mainly to be making it physically harder to get all the girls out of there (not necessary given Jessa's missing glasses presenting impediment enough); she was an afterthought in the climax, where David had to physically leave Jessa's living room to go back and get an unconscious Alexis in the middle of his mother's monologue. Trimming the four down to three would clean up those logistical problems, and leave room for expanding upon the remaining girls' characterization in a way I feel the narrative needed to increase my personal engagement.
My secondary problem was my overall inability to suspend my disbelief at times when the narrative demanded it if I wanted to stay immersed in the story. The most glaring example of this comes in the form of Johnny, Tiny's boyfriend. I could, perhaps, have gotten over his anachronistic name (hello, 80s!) if his overall description didn't also feel very much out of touch with modernity, and if his role in the story had felt more grounded. After his introduction where he appeared at Jessa's house with a knife, beat up the boys, and acted erratically to demonstrate that Tiny is In Trouble with him, but then was summarily frogmarched back out again by Alexis and Kellan, I expected Johnny to come back into the story as more than a name mentioned in passing. I figured he would come back at the end and be crucial for stopping David and his mom, perhaps getting hurt in the process himself, but he just... stopped existing after the dramatic reveal that Tiny was being abused. .
Another example is the flashback scenes featuring a different group of girls. Once the conceit of the story became clear and the twist became known to the reader, I thought these scenes would reveal that David was secretly way older than he pretended to be, because it feels insane that a teenage boy would mastermind the whole kidnapping Jessa operation, and his emotional control over his mother would make more sense that way too. Plus, it would make more sense that he'd have had practice kidnapping other girls, and it would be far more chilling to me if Jessa was just the latest in a long line of false perfect girls who'd "disappointed" him once he realized they had personality and dimension outside of his weird fantasies about them. . This proved not to be the case, and the flashback scenes thus felt 1. less realistic and 2. less deserving of the page space they got. I would rather the space dedicated to them have been used for character work for the main narrative, where the information presented in the flashbacks could have been summarized on the news/in conversations between people/etc.
Finally in terms of susupension of disbelief, I'm supposed to believe there were no fatalities? Really? A group of less than capable teenagers gets themselves into this situation and none of them are permanently injured at least? I found the ending to be too happy, and closed off too cleanly for my liking. I wanted Jessa's backbone to grow sharp, and for her to stand up to her mom by the end.
Overall, a fast read with just enough chillingness to the plot that you can handwave any tropiness of the characters. While it wasn't for me personally, I'd recommend it to readers of Holly Jackson looking for a new voice in YA thrillers to spend a few hours with this spooky season.
I really enjoyed Perfect Girl's atmosphere. The environment around Jessa and her friends acted as threat and impediment as the story went on, but also set a tense, frightening emotional mood. I found the storm to be a useful tool to remove the modern day crutch of cell phones as an avenue for communication. The way it was introduced was clever and didn't feel like authorial hand so much as natural consequence to the actions set forth by the plot prior, actions which would've been innocent and harmless under different circumstances. I also loved the themes brought up by Perfect Girl; the entitlement of patriarchy is one of my favorite threats to explore in a story. In classic thriller fashion, I found it to strike the exact balance of over-the-top but technically believable/possible, which is always fun and helps keep the pages turning. I also like what Banghart did in terms of grounding the story in a specific time; the COVID19 pandemic is real and it happened and it's interesting to see the way the anxieties around illness and memories of masking were tackled in a story about kids whose educations and senses of safety were interrupted by this global phenomenon.
My main problem with Perfect Girl is this: there was one girl too many in the main narrative. I understand Banghart's desire to depict multiple avenues of girlhood and the ways that societal pressures manifest differently in each. However, in the attempt to do this, each girl ended up feeling unidimensional and underexplored: Alexis the Closeted Queer Athlete, Kellan the Outspoken Social Media Queen, Tiny the Troubled One, and Jessa the Quiet Academic. The greatest downfall of this choice is that the narrative didn't get to explore the ways that varying pressures often intersect. I found myself thinking about how much more nuanced and interesting each girl's personal arc would be if they just blended some of their characteristics. What if Jessa had been a closeted lesbian?
In terms of just moving the plot along, I found that one of the quartet of best friends was often missing from the narrative altogether, and in such a way as though she took no action outside of the scene on page (or even worse, while she was on page). When her best friends were all
My secondary problem was my overall inability to suspend my disbelief at times when the narrative demanded it if I wanted to stay immersed in the story. The most glaring example of this comes in the form of Johnny, Tiny's boyfriend. I could, perhaps, have gotten over his anachronistic name (hello, 80s!) if his overall description didn't also feel very much out of touch with modernity, and if his role in the story had felt more grounded. After his introduction where he appeared at Jessa's house
Another example is the flashback scenes featuring a different group of girls. Once the conceit of the story became clear and the twist became known to the reader, I thought these scenes would reveal that
Finally in terms of susupension of disbelief, I'm supposed to believe there were
Overall, a fast read with just enough chillingness to the plot that you can handwave any tropiness of the characters. While it wasn't for me personally, I'd recommend it to readers of Holly Jackson looking for a new voice in YA thrillers to spend a few hours with this spooky season.