AJ L. (pyrajane) reviewed on 8/31/2005 + 69 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

The book is about three friends: Astrid, Juli, and our protagonist, Thisbe, aka Jellybean. They go to the only all girl's high school in Milwaukee. It's the late 80s and the girls do all that they can to live up to their whores on the hill rep.

At first I thought this book was going to capture that out of control, on top of the world feeling you had at 15. That feeling that you are in complete control of everything and everyone, but at the same time you have no control over anything. (Or maybe that was just me.)

Over all, this book was really disappointing. It wasn't a shocking peek into the teenage world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, because that's been done a million times, and in much better ways. None of the characters develop into anyone or anything.

The one thing I really did like was a totally unexpected character revelation at the end that had nothing (well, almost nothing) to do with the three girls. It came out of the blue and I thought it was clever.

The ending felt silly; almost like Curran couldn't figure out how to get Thisbe out of her situation, so she fell back on a cliched plot twist. But then she did rescue it a bit with the very last sentence in the book, which made me wonder if Thisbe was going to become Astrid, only a good version. And then that felt like a total rip off of the movie Heathers.

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