pretty little devils ; a book review by me (duh)

"You know the parties are vapid and maybe even evil, but you still want to be invited" (John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed, discussing The Great Gatsby) “If this was what selling your soul to the Devils got you, she was glad that she’d signed on the dotted line.” (p. 92) Pretty Little Devils (2006) by Nancy Holder on the surface is a slow-paced horror-thriller-mystery focused on Hazel Stone, a junior at Brookhaven High. After a summer spent with her brother, away from her “c-lister” friend group, she gets noticed by the Pretty Little Devils (PLD), the most popular clique at school. She has longed to be a part of their group just like everyone else. After an incident in the cafeteria the head girl of the PLDs, Sylvia Orly, invites Hazel to her first PLD party. From dead cats, horses and then people, events go from bad to worse. At the end of chapter one, an anonymous figure by the name of ‘Happy2BME’ writes these cryptic posts on her blog about the PLDs and how they aren’t ready for what this anonymous figure has in store. Throughout the book the posts become less cryptic, and easier to piece together as to who is writing them. The author Nancy Holder does a good job of leading us to possible culprits but also to some dead ends using subtle clues throughout the novel. Besides this being a high school horror-thriller-mystery it is also a subtle critique of celebrity culture experienced at high school. Through all high school, Hazel has dreamed of becoming a PLD and when she does, she starts to see the downfalls and negative impacts of being one of the most popular girls in school. People start harassing her and making her paranoid. The book shows how life is not so glamorous behind the scenes of fame and popularity. We see Hazel wishing she could be her old “c-lister” self again, and resenting who she has become and the people around her. This theme leads into the next one the book explores - politics. Like any other average American high school story from the 2000’s there is a sense of a political system. Three main “parties” exist at Brookhaven: PLDs, the cheerleaders and the football players. There is also a hierarchy in the school, where the PLDs are at the top and everyone is below them. The cheerleaders are at a constant battle for the top while the football players rank slightly below the PLDs but have no intent to go higher up nor do they seem to care. The politics don’t have a clear objective unlike other stories where girls are competing to date a football player or become prom queen. For the characters in this book all they want is admiration and fame. They want to be worshiped like gods, lusted over. I think this is one of the better young-adult novels I’ve read in a while, the plot is very interesting and kept me intrigued the whole time. The plot twists are excellent, and I really enjoyed how Holder led me in all different directions while trying to figure out who the culprit is. The characters are well written and fit what you would think of average teenagers. This is the second time I’ve read this book, so the cryptic messages weren’t as confusing as they were the first time around, though the critique of celebrity culture is something I heavily noticed the second time. It really portrays the negative aspects of fame. Overall, this book does a good job of exploring a mystery while having themes of politics and fame.