Content warnings: rape [central to storyline but not directly on page], extreme depictions of rape culture, murder, violence (more details available on Capin’s website)
TLW[on’t]R[read the review]: The book is fucking dazzling. Read it (as long as you’re ok with a rape-revenge plot that’s truly empowering and not some misogynist torture porn shit or self-abnegating morality play).
Summary [courtesy of Goodreads]: Elle and her friends Mads, Jenny, and Summer rule their glittering LA circle. Untouchable, they have the kind of power other girls only dream of. Every party is theirs and the world is at their feet. Until the night of Elle’s sweet sixteen, when they crash a St. Andrew’s Prep party. The night the golden boys choose Elle as their next target. They picked the wrong girl. Sworn to vengeance, Elle transfers to St. Andrew’s. She plots to destroy each boy, one by one. She’ll take their power, their lives, and their control of the prep school’s hierarchy. And she and her coven have the perfect way in: a boy named Mack, whose ambition could turn deadly.
I adore this book. It has my motherfucking heart, and I think Hannah Capin must be a true kindred spirit. Her commitment to righteous female rage and vengeance is unparalleled in modern YA (hell, maybe in all of traditionally published lit), as far as I know, and I love how her work is not merely unapologetic but GLEEFUL in its takedown of patriarchal violence and the boys that perpetuate it.
This book adamantly affirms “yes, ALL cis, white men” (and some cis, white women), and it revels in the punishment Jade and her friends enact on her violators and their enablers. Yes, these girls are rich, and yes, they’re privileged as hell, but they use that privilege in fantastically (in all the senses of that word) self-aware ways. At the same time, Capin doesn’t shy away from dealing with the emotional and mental fallout of Jade’s assault NOR her bloodthirsty quest for revenge–the book is truly nuanced.
And throughout, Capin writes in an almost incantatory, mesmerizing style–evoking not just the plot and themes of Macbeth but its poetics as well. As with her forthcoming novel, I Am Margaret Moore, she manages to create a true literary masterpiece while exploring (and exploding) traditional YA tropes.
SPOILER TERRITORY
The book ends with a terrific mini-twist that provides a double-wink at Shakespearean as well as contemporary celebrity culture. I won’t venture too far into spoilers, but I will say that Capin departs rather firmly from her source material–Jade may be a modern Lady Macbeth, but there’s no danger she’ll suffer an ignominious off-page death. In fact, there’s not much need to worry about Jade at all…
[H/T to Bear and their fabulous Booktube channel Et Tu Brody for the stellar recommendation of this once upon a time.]
[A brief word on I Am Margaret Moore: I think this earlier book is more successful at executing its sharp intentions, and I think it’s more assured, but I think that hesitation is part of the project of her newest work. IAMM was originally set to come out this Fall and has now been pushed back to March, and it’s met with some harsh reviews based on its dreamy, stream-of-consciousness style, so I wonder if some revisions are in process. I really dug the style {and I have a massive review of it to post once it DOES get released}, so I hope it doesn’t change that much in its final version.]