Girls on Fire

March 21, 2016
For her first adult novel, Wasserman (The Waking Dark) doesn’t stray far from her YA wheelhouse, with this overwrought if intermittently powerful tale of the increasingly toxic relationship between two outcast high school girls. It’s 1991 in stodgy Battle Creek, Pa., not long after the apparent suicide of jock Craig Ellison, boyfriend of the school’s reigning mean girl, Nikki Drummond, and neither the lumpy, socially awkward Hannah Dexter nor the rebellious Kurt Cobain–acolyte Lacey Champlain fits in. So it seems only natural when the pair begin to bond over their seemingly shared hatred of Nikki. But unbeknownst to Hannah (or “Dex,” as the alpha Lacey rechristens her), Lacey is abused at home by a holy roller stepfather and alcoholic mother and has secrets that threaten both of them, not least a smoldering hidden past with Nikki. Wasserman attempts to imbue her keenly observed junior Thelma and Louise with broader social resonance about girlhood and empowerment, but for many readers the take-home message may instead be that not all unhappy lives prove compelling.

May 1, 2016

YA author Wasserman's first novel for adults explores the fraught relationship between two teenage girls. Hannah Dexter meets Lacey Champlain during their junior year in high school. When she's with Lacey, the normally quiet and reserved Hannah becomes "Dex"--a darker, edgier risk taker who receives life lessons from Lacey in the fine art of skipping class and the music of Kurt Cobain. Before long, Dex and Lacey are inseparable. But when a popular basketball star from their school is found dead in the woods in a suspected suicide, readers gradually discover that the girls are caught up in other grim entanglements with their classmates. VERDICT Although her subject matter is bleak, Wasserman writes with knowing clarity about teenage friendship and the emotional land mines of high school. Recommended for fans of Megan Abbott. [Previewed in Erica Ruth Neubauer's Mystery Preview, "Edge-of-Your-Seat Thrills," LJ 4/15/16.--Ed.]--Amy Hoseth, Colorado State Univ. Lib., Fort Collins

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016
It's Halloween 1991, and the small town of Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, is rocked by the apparent suicide of a popular high-school jock. Was there foul play? What about the evidence of devil-worship rituals found in the woods? The whole school's buzzing, and queen bee Nikki lashes out even more than usual at plain-Jane Hannah, which sets the stage for newcomer Lacey to enter the scene. Lacey, a grunge goddess, decides to take Hannah under her wing, molding Hannah in her flannel-and-black-corseted image, getting her drunk, introducing her to Nirvana, and even renaming her as Dex. It's under the guise of showing the world what rebels they are, but it turns out to be really more about showing Nikki who's who. The three girls have a complicated relationship that goes well beyond eyeliner, Kurt Cobain, and the usual teen angst. Although YA author Wasserman's adult debut may feature high-school students, it's strictly for more mature readers. The story unfolds as a maddening tease, with shocking events waiting around every cornerand an ending that will leave readers stunned.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2016
Girls behaving very, very badly. Hannah Dexter has been lonely for so long that she doesn't even notice anymore. She's not an outcast; she's a nonentity. An episode of public humiliation brings her to the attention of Lacey Champlain. Initially bound together in their hatred of popular girl supreme Nikki Drummond, Hannah and Lacey become inseparable, with Lacey the dominant member of this dyad. She transforms Hannah into Dex, replacing her Keds and Kmart T-shirts with Doc Martens and flannel. Under Lacey's tutelage, Dex becomes the kind of girl who swipes drinks from her parents' liquor cabinet and sneaks into clubs. Dex knows that Lacey has a dark side, but she doesn't know the half of it, and it's not long before this attachment takes a pathological turn. Wasserman has written a number of books for kids (Game of Flames, 2015, etc.), and she clearly sympathizes with that audience. The challenge here is that grown-ups almost never find adolescents as fascinating as they find themselves. Reading this overstuffed and overwrought book is, more often than not, as tiresome as paging through a high school diary. The fact that it's set in the 1990s doesn't help. The references to Nirvana and Sun-In and LA Gear sneakers create a sense of nostalgia rather than a sense of immediacy. (It was probably a good call to avoid mention of Heathers, which covered similar territory with wit and brevity rather than melodrama and extended metaphors.) The writing is repetitive--Wasserman delivers the same information over and over again--and overly florid. Indeed, the fact that the whole novel is written at fever pitch defuses the horror toward which the narrative builds. And, after hammering home the smallness of the town Dex and Lacey dream of escaping, Wasserman asks the reader to believe that this humdrum place could produce not one, but two, teen sociopaths--not just mean girls who go too far, but born deceivers and natural manipulators. Simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming.

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