Dare Me by Megan Abbott Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“That’s what people never understand: They see us hard little pretty things, brightly lacquered and sequin-studded, and they laugh, they mock, they arouse themselves. They miss everything. You see, these glitters and sparkle dusts and magicks? It’s war paint, it’s feather and claws, it’s blood sacrifice.- Dare Me, Megan Abbott

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.

I don't know how I feel yet about Megan Abbott. This is the second book within a short period of time that I read by her and both weren't as great as some of the reviews I read made them seem. She has interesting story ideas and a unique writing style that should work, but there's just something about her books that I find lacking.

I mean, I was enjoying the first half of this book. The writing and the overall atmosphere really worked for me, even if I did get a little bored looking for the mystery. But I had a busy week and read the first half in small doses, stealing bits of the book whenever I had time. But when I actually sat down and finished the book, I found myself getting annoyed with the way the mystery progressed and seeing flaws in the writing (the style gets really grating after awhile, especially since it feels at times like Abbott is just saying pretty things for the sake of saying pretty things) and especially the character interaction and just characterization in general. 

There's something kind of contrived about Dare Me, and I think the works I've read of Megan Abbott in general. I don't think she understands entirely how people act, if that makes sense. Those who claim that this book is the closest they'll come again to being in the mind of a teenage girl must be a long, long way from teenagerhood. Frankly, I had a hard time seeing how any of this was plausible, and this is most glaring in Beth's actions and especially the way she spoke. I mean, she sounded like a Southern drag queen. Not only that, she sounded exactly like how Chablis spoke in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I kept expecting her to throw out a child or ooo honey. I don't think this book is supposed to take place in the South, but everyone sounded pretty Southern to my Yankee ears. I wonder if Abbott is from somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, because both this book and You Will Know Me seemed like it took place down there, even if there were some remarks made by characters that seemed to the contrary. I also felt like half the things that come out of the mouths of these characters felt way too symbolic or heavy and laden with meaning. Unnatural. I can't think of one person who would speak the way Beth did, for instance, or Tacy, and still be taken seriously.

But I'm close enough to my teen years to say that so much in this book seemed implausible. It's like Heathers in that respect- meant to expose the dark and edgy side of the world of teenage girls but is completely unrealistic. No high school cheer coach would invite her underage girls back to her house to drink, no matter how young and hip she was. And the close relationship she forged with those girls... especially since it seems like this is a pretty small town, she would get caught and terminated immediately. And both Beth and Addy felt thin, like Abbott really tried to make them interesting, noir-ish characters, but they didn't really work for me. Well, they did at first, but by the second half I was bored of all of them. 

I can definitely tell this book and You Will Know Me were written by the same author. Both the subject matter and the way the story were set up was very evocative of each other. Both books focus on intense sports, and both are billed as thrillers, but take a long time to get to the actual mystery. And in both, the resolution was ultimately unsatisfactory. Interestingly, especially for an Edgar-awarding winning author, the mystery aspect of the plot also felt secondary, unnecessary, and thrown in, as if she felt like she had to add a mystery in somewhere. I would have been fine if this book was just about Beth trying to take down Coach, because the mystery just didn't grab me, and ended up being the weak link in the story.

I don't really have much else left to say about this story except that I think this book is best in small chunks. When you read large amounts of it at once, the flaws become annoyingly apparent. In fact, reading this book reminds me of watching Gilmore Girls. I can only take one, maybe two episodes of that show at a time, any more and the continuity errors, characters, and soap opera storylines become obvious. Overall, there's something missing in Dare Me, something that, after finishing, left me feeling lukewarm about both the book and Megan Abbott in general. I still might try one more book by her- maybe The End of Everything or The Fever- but I don't know if my opinions will change much. Hell, maybe I'll prefer her hardboiled fiction to these middlingly contemporary thrillers. Who knows?

7 out of 10