I did not expect to enjoy The Thrashers. It seemed scandalous and set in a high school which is usually problematic for me. Unless it is a romcom or written by someone who has spent a lot of time in an actual high school exactly like the one I work in. I just hate it when "realistic" high school books don't feel real to me. Like I loved Fake Skating, but there is no way in hell that they wouldn't let a new kid join any freaking club they wanted to!
Back to The Thrashers. There is a popular clique that is actually NAMED The Thrashers (strike one), there is a younger kid who thinks that they will let her join because she is in love with the main thrasher (strike two), she kills herself the night of prom (strike three), the Thrashers are all called in to the police station about it (can you have more than three strikes?). I mean, I was suspending so much disbelief that my arms were shaking.
And yet it kind of worked. I needed to know what actually happened and Soto pretty much told me by the end. It got way weirder than I anticipated, but I didn't mind the ride. Sure, Zach is a douche from day one, but high school girls are notoriously attracted to those. Lucy and Paige were essentially interchangeable to me. And I found it really hard to believe that with all the Logan Echols vibes Julian was throwing off that he and Jodi never connected at all before the shit-storm. But the whole thing was better than the sum of its parts.
I have been booktalking the MTCBA titles and this one always puts a gleam in the eye of several kids who want to read about really horrible high school experiences, maybe as a way of making the actual horrors of high school seem more benign. And more power to them!
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