A review by beforeviolets
Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.0

Think Heathers or Mean Girls but make it sapphic and make the mean girls werewolves! Delightfully cheesy and monstrous in the way every werewolf story should be. It wonderfully embodied the hunger for justice we all crave in this shitty patriarchal society in a fantastically literal way. The illustrative style - done by the wonderful artist Lisa Sterle - reminded me of Archie comics, leaning into classic and familiar high school vibes and tropes that this book established just to break them down. It allowed the darker moments of this story to stand out even further, contrasting against a world we think we understand. It also made the story feel somewhat timeless, mixing retro styles with a modern setting.

I felt that it lacked depth in approaching some of the more important real-world topics the book brought up (fatphobia, diet culture, misogyny, r*pe culture, etc.) by just kind of dropping the themes in there without really exploring them or providing much commentary on them. (Especially with the fatphobia, there were lines from "you could stand to go on a diet" to a skinny character calling themselves "overweight" that were implied to be bad but otherwise went unchecked.) 

But for the purpose of an exciting, fun read for all the "weird girls" out there, it most definitely delivered. I would highly recommend if you like monster girls (a trope that i REALLY love), morally grey characters, cheesy horror/fantasy, and revenge plots. 
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