Dare Me
Ratings25
Average rating2.8
From the award-winning author of The Turnout and Give Me Your Hand: the searing novel of friendship and betrayal that inspired the USA Network series, praised by Gillian Flynn as "Lord of the Flies set in a high-school cheerleading squad...Tense, dark, and beautifully written." Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy's best friend and trusted lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they're seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls -- until the young new coach arrives. Cool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach's golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her position as "top girl" -- both with the team and with Addy herself. Then a suicide focuses a police investigation on Coach and her squad. After the first wave of shock and grief, Addy tries to uncover the truth behind the death -- and learns that the boundary between loyalty and love can be dangerous terrain. The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with what Tom Perrotta has hailed as "total authority and an almost desperate intensity," provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the all-American girl.
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I apparently need a shelf for things I read because it turns out that I need more books than I can carry for two weeks in Europe and there's no English language bookstores in the Swiss Alps and my library app limits what I can download internationally.
This book is utter crap. Complete and utter crap. Paper thin characters. The least mysterious mystery. I'm not totally sure Megan Abbott was ever a teenage girl, but, wow, that is NOT what it's like. Also, it reads super slowly. I seriously considered DNF'ing it despite having literally no reading alternative. Not really any redeeming features.
This is another instance when I'd have liked 1/2 stars. This is better than a 3, but not a four. The main drawback for me - aside from all the characters being unlikeable - was that none of the characters were all that well developed. I kept mixing them up and having to go back and re-read.
What was good about the book was how it captured what's it's like to be a teenage girl. The ruthlessness, viciousness and recklessness. But, like I said, all of the characters were just awful people. Vapid, selfish, cruel, self-absorbed... And I especially hated the coach. There is obviously something wrong with a 27 year-old married woman with a child hanging out with a bunch of high school cheerleaders and making one of them her most trusted confidante. The only character who rebelled against that was set up to be the villain of the book and she is the only one who (despite her misguided efforts) I could even remotely identify with.
So, bottom line, while this book struck the right tone, I came away feeling a little grimy after reading it.
This writing style, it is not for me. I thought it handled grooming in an interesting way, but over all I don't plan to read more books by this author.
