DIE A LITTLE by Megan Abbott

GRADE: C-

Almost from the start, Lora King, a Pasadena schoolteacher, thinks that something fishy is going on with her mysterious new sister-in-law. In an effort to protect her pussy-whipped brother, she begins to investigate his wife's secrets, and she finds herself uncovering a world of sex, drugs, and murder. 

Given how much I enjoyed the three other books I've read by Megan Abbott, I was surprised with how disappointed I was with this one, her debut novel. I really wanted to like it more than I did, but I found the plot to be fairly unremarkable, the characters forgettable, and the book, frankly boring. I loved the idea of a bunch of dainty, sheltered, 1950's suburban wives getting caught up in the degenerate underworld of Hollywood, but the book was surprisingly delicate, too tame to really milk out its potential and be truly powerful. How awesome would it have been if Lora, this naive and innocent high school teacher, stumbled into the nasty world of a James Ellroy novel! But instead, what she stumbles into never really feels all that dangerous, more like a moderate, Decency-Code-Era movie version of the underworld. And the plot never really gave me much more than what I read in the synopsis. I hoped for more!

THE FEVER by Megan Abbott

GRADE: B-

The small town of Dryden and it's high school start to freak out when, one after the other, teenage girls begin to have violent, seizure-like episodes, throwing everyone into panic. No one can figure out what's happening, and everyone is speculating on the cause, with guesses ranging from bad school building conditions to mutant STD's. 

"You spend a long time waiting for life to start–the past year or two filled with all these firsts, everything new and terrifying and significant–and then it does start and you realize it isn't what you'd expected, or asked for."

Megan Abbott has been one of my favorite author discoveries this year and is once again brilliant here, paralleling the growing pains of teenage girls with a contagious outbreak! And the mystery of what is causing it all is genuinely intriguing, all the way up to the end. The build-up of the paranoia, fear, and suspicion among the residents of the town and the students and faculty at the school is handled very well.

My main gripe is that I felt that some of the characterization was a bit weak, especially amongst the main girls, like Deenie, Gabby, and Skye. I never really connected with the soft-spoken main character Deenie, who seems to be at the center of it all because the seizures are popping up amongst her circle of friends. And I couldn't really gather why her best friend Gabby was such a popular girl. I also could never really figure out why Skye (who seemed to be such a strong, independent girl that pushed to buck the high school social system) would follow the popular girl around all day, as her entourage, attached to her hip.

But there are some characters that are really well-drawn and interesting to read about, like Deenie's brother Eli, who is so handsome the girls fall all over him, but he seems oblivious to the attention, and still doubtful of his understanding of the female kind. This understanding diminishes even more as he witnesses the affliction that's making it's way amongst the girls.

Although not as great as some of Abbott's other work, there is still lots of awesome stuff here and is definitely a page-turning mystery. Recommended!

*Advanced Copy provided by publisher through NetGalley for review!*

DARE ME by Megan Abbott

GRADE: B+

I had seen the picture of this hardcover floating around the Interwebs and wrote it off as a teeny-bopper, young adult, chick-lit novel. That was before I knew who Megan Abbott was. That was before I read her awesome, hard-boiled crime book, Queenpin. After reading that award-winning romp, I knew I had to reevaluate that book with the cover art featuring the lip-biting teen. And now, after finishing Dare Me, I now have to seek out every one of Abbott's novels.

This foray into the TERRIFYING world of a high-school cheerleading squad is riveting thanks to the same crackling prose and astute observations that made Queenpin so great. 

"And there's Emily, keening over the toilet bowl after practice, begging me to kick her in the gut so she can expel the rest, all that cookie dough and cool ranch, the smell making me roil. Emily, a girl made entirely of donut sticks, cheesepowder, and Haribo. 

I kick, I do.

She would do the same for me."

Not only does Megan throw you headfirst into the highly competitive (and surprisingly dangerous) ins-and-outs of cheer, but she also takes you into the mind of the main character, a modern teenage girl. Addy's world is filled with insecurities, jealousy, and mind-games. And once the new cheer coach enters her life, her romantic outlook on adulthood gets turned upside down. Megan Abbott, writing with confidence, guides us through it all.

QUEENPIN by Megan Abbott

GRADE: A-

It's always exciting discovering a new author, whose work I can't wait to dive into more. It's great reading a pulp noir novel from a woman's perspective (with a man as the "femme fatale" no less! ha!) and written with the same tough talk of some of the hard-boiled classics. In the book, a young, bright-eyed club bookkeeper finds herself living the good life after she becomes the protégé of an aging but still glamorous (and still ruthless) mob queen. She might lose everything after breaking the rules and falling hard for a two-bit gambler. Sexy and poetic, Megan Abbott's prose is the main star here. It starts off with all gun's blazing, never lets up, and makes it hard to put the book down. Here are two excerpts that give you a taste of her great writing:

"It was a soft sell, a long sell. I never knew what she had in mind until I already had such a taste I thought my tongue would never stop buzzing. Meaning, she got me in, she got me jobs, she got me fat stacks of cash too thick to wedge down my cleavage. She got me in with the hard boys, the fast money, and I couldn't get enough. I wanted more. Give me more."

-

"One night, he ripped my $350 faille day suit from collar to skirt hem in one long tear. Fuck me, I was in love.
I'm yours, that's what I told him without ever spitting out a word. He could see it on me, feel it on me. He liked to have me on the bare mattress, liked the way it rubbed me raw. I liked it. Liked the burn of it. Liked thinking of it all the next day, every time I leaned against anything, every time the strap of my brassiere pulled across it."

Can't wait to read more Megan Abbott, who has books with awesome titles like Bury Me Deep and The End of Everything