Rating: ★★★★☆
There's a good possibility that I'm being overly generous with my rating of this book for two main reasons: 1) My self-proclaimed guilty pleasure is trashy teen high school drama books - I absolutely DIED over reading PLL, and I binged all 8 seasons of Gossip Girl in a month and 2) This is exactly the kind of book I needed to read right now. I picked this book up in a bookstore because the cover was gorgeous and it was in great condition and it was actually $2. I've been in a bit of slump - I've just been reading so much heavy sci-fi and classics and complicated/dark fantasy lately that it has been burning me out. So, my cure? A 300-page teen drama. And it accomplished its mission well enough.
When it comes to betrayal, a little goes a long way.
This book is like the movie Mean Girls, if it was told from the perspectives of Regina, Gretchen, Janis, and Damian. The funny thing is, one of the narrators even recognizes the extreme similarities and makes connections between the characters in Winning and the characters from the film. Also, if Regina George was more like Blair Waldorf - smart in her scheming, vindictive, cruel, and not concerned with "collateral damage".
I really liked seeing the viewpoint of Alexandra (the Queen Bee/Regina George/Blair Waldorf). Obviously, the way she's written makes her absolutely horrible, and I think this is one unlikable character where it is very obvious that you are not supposed to like her. It helps that there are multiple perspectives from the good guys, it stops us from siding too much with Alexandra when we know it's wrong. I didn't love Sloane's chapters just because I thought they were completely unnecessary. She acts like she's going to bring Alexandra down (ahem, Janis Ian), using her best friend (Gretchen) and by ruining her relationship with Matt (Aaron Samuels). But then she hardly plays a role in orchestrating Alexandra's great fall. I suppose they added her perspective because they wanted the book to be longer or more substantive, but if that's the case they really should have given some chapters to New Girl Erin. I understand why she didn't have any chapters, since it did help make her seem like an outsider, but for a book that is supposedly about a Queen Bee protecting her throne from a preppy New Girl, the New Girl isn't in the novel as much as you'd expect.
Just a small detail I want to point out - no matter how immature and evil Alexandra was, can we talk about Principal Frick? Like how can a principal "have it out" for a student? How is a school administrator allowed to so publicly hate a student? I'm not saying Alexandra didn't deserve to be hated, but Frick was just unprofessional.
Look, the writing isn't fantastic. The plot is clearly not original. The characters are one-dimensional, and the author is a little insensitive to certain societal taboos (having a sober person take advantage of a drunk/roofied person at a party, but it's okay because they weren't the one that roofied her and they end up dating later anyway). Overall, the story is cliche and predictable and not that compelling. But I still liked it. I enjoyed my time reading it, and I wanted to know how everything was going to happen. For me, this book was an escape into a 2000's teen movie. You know it's not real, or even a realistic reflection of high school, but it's still entertaining. So I may reduce my rating after I've had more time for it to sink in, but overall I was entertained and that's the important thing IMO.
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