League of Strays

September 15, 2012
A group of misfits is drawn together by a charismatic, sinister boy for friendship and revenge. When narrator Charlotte Brody moves across the state in her senior year, she is virtually alone in her new school. She's wary when she receives a mysterious invitation to join the "League of Strays," but she figures she's got little to lose. The League is a truly motley crew: a gay boy and suspected drug dealer, a perpetually angry girl who always wears camouflage, the likely school valedictorian and Charlotte, a violist on the fast track to a conservatory. They are pulled together by dark and dangerous Kade, a boy with Robert Pattinson hair and absent parents. Forbidden to interact at school, they meet in secret to plan revenge against the people who have made their lives miserable--"pranks" that are not innocent even from the first, but cruel, criminal and life-threatening. Law-abiding Charlotte, though horrified, stays with the League because of both the friendship it offers and her (irritatingly mindless) attraction to Kade. Readers will spot Kade's sociopathy from the get-go, making it difficult to remain sympathetic to her. By starting the League's activities out with an act of out-and-out vandalism that turns into arson rather than lulling Charlotte and readers with relatively innocent pranks, Schulman sacrifices building tension, turning this thriller into Charlotte's drawn-out journey of self-discovery. Peer pressure is an evergreen theme, but it is imperfectly explored here. (Fiction. 13 & up)

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December 1, 2012

Gr 8 Up-A group of students brought together in secret by charming yet slightly menacing Kade becomes a weapon of revenge. Charlotte, the new girl flying under the radar, receives a cryptic invitation and finds herself meeting with some stock high-school types: the brainy girl, the outed and bullied boy, the camo-jacketed angry child of an alcoholic mother, and of course, Kade himself: persuasive, mysterious, and compelling. All the misfits Kade has chosen have experienced some bullying or mistreatment. One by one, he engineers comeuppance; for example, the genius whose grade-point average took a plunge because of a gym teacher breaks in to the teacher's office at night with the League of Strays to trash it and a storage room and to scrawl epithets, bringing the principal, Kade's nemesis, to full alert. Romance between Charlotte and Kade produces some steam, and questions about his problems with the law and a girl from his past infuse some mystery. However, savvy readers will have little doubt that he is a bad apple and that things with the League of Strays are destined to become ugly, even deadly. Clunky similes don't enhance the writing. Plot, characters, and even the title fall short of what most readers demand in realistic YA fiction: realism. What teachers use paper grade books, and what school isn't secured with video surveillance these days? This one comes across as out of date and out of touch, rather than drawn from contemporary life.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2012
Grades 9-12 In Schulman's debut, a group of bullied students turns the tables, under the direction of a magnetic but threatening mastermind, Kade. Charlotte hasn't made any friends in her new school, so she thinks her invitation to join the League of Strays is a joke. The other invitees are equally dubious, but Kade convinces them that he has brought them together for a higher purpose. A person has ruined each of their lives, and Kade believes they can help one another get revenge. When the league's pranks grow too unsettling, Charlotte wants to call it quits, but Kade has other plans. Kade is unsubtly drawn as a burgeoning sociopath, with manipulative behavior so obvious that it's difficult to excuse the characters' blind obedience, particularly Charlotte, who gives in to her attraction for him even while commenting on his disturbing behavior. However, some readers may very well be drawn in by the suspense of the pranks, each more cringe worthy than the last. Those seeking a more nuanced portrayal of bullying should try A. S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants (2011).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)