The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Intense, implausible, and impossible to put down Besides a backstory involving transphobic bullying, none of these identities go much beyond name and appearance. Jade’s father is an Indian immigrant (her mother’s ethnicity is not mentioned), dark-skinned transgender Mads has a Latinx name, Jenny is implied Korean, and Summer is bisexual. What they will find, after they leave their disbelief at the door, is a steadfast sisterhood repaying heedless assault with red-hot rage and perhaps, in the age of #MeToo, that is enough to begin with. Readers will find little moral or emotional complexity in these pages and hardly any character development or examination of the self-destructive power of vengeance. Rhythmic, propulsive prose drives this bloody retelling of Macbeth at a relentless pace all the way to its violent end. But when Jade falls for Mack, her friends start to question her loyalties, and she must decide how far she’ll go. Using her middle name, Jade, Elle enrolls in the boys’ private school and launches an elaborate scheme of manipulation and retaliation, choosing golden boy Mack, who is in their friend group, as her scapegoat for murder. After four boys spike Elle’s drink and rape her, the girls decide to kill them. A teen and her best friends exact revenge on the prep school boys who raped her.Įlle, Mads, Jenny, and Summer are wealthy Los Angeles teens who crash a prep school party on Elle’s 16th birthday.

Foul Is Fair by Hannah Capin