A review by brandinh
Dead Little Mean Girl by Eva Darrows
4.0
Im finding it difficult to rate this book accurately and compose my thoughts, but I will do my best.
First of, I really enjoyed this book. Emma is a fantastic and relatable main character. Her mom and the relationship between Emma and both her parents is actually great (despite her dad being absent due to work, when he is around, he is good). Emma’s friendships and eventual relationship, also gold. Bonus, Emma has great t-shirts. 😊
Yet Quinn (the titular Dead Little Mean Girl) is diabolical and truly awful. As other reviewers have stated, we never really see many redeeming qualities in Quinn and Emma’s eventual enlightening about the reasoning behind Quinn’s horrible behavior (she was actually just a hurting girl, desperate for help) would be easier to swallow had we been given any real evidence to back this up. Also, Quinn’s parents were just, probably realistic, but pretty terrible. Karen seemed like a good woman who was completely lost about how to parent her own child, perhaps understandable, but she certainly never figured it out. Yet, after reading the author’s note (packaged as acknowledgments, a mistake because many readers skip them) it turns out that Darrows was making Quinn horrific on purpose, in response to society’s tendency to vilify teen girls. Media typically portrays mean girls as mean for mean’s sake, which in my experience, is rarely true to life. Certainly it happens, but sociopaths don’t really make up that large a percentage of our population. (See the National Institute for Mental Health for specific data). I’m not sure Darrows entirely pulled off what she was going for, as mentioned above this would have been easier to swallow had we seen more redeeming behavior or had more insight into Quinn’s feelings. But overall, I find this to be surprisingly feminist take on the mean girl trope.
First of, I really enjoyed this book. Emma is a fantastic and relatable main character. Her mom and the relationship between Emma and both her parents is actually great (despite her dad being absent due to work, when he is around, he is good). Emma’s friendships and eventual relationship, also gold. Bonus, Emma has great t-shirts. 😊
Yet Quinn (the titular Dead Little Mean Girl) is diabolical and truly awful. As other reviewers have stated, we never really see many redeeming qualities in Quinn and Emma’s eventual enlightening about the reasoning behind Quinn’s horrible behavior (she was actually just a hurting girl, desperate for help) would be easier to swallow had we been given any real evidence to back this up. Also, Quinn’s parents were just, probably realistic, but pretty terrible. Karen seemed like a good woman who was completely lost about how to parent her own child, perhaps understandable, but she certainly never figured it out. Yet, after reading the author’s note (packaged as acknowledgments, a mistake because many readers skip them) it turns out that Darrows was making Quinn horrific on purpose, in response to society’s tendency to vilify teen girls. Media typically portrays mean girls as mean for mean’s sake, which in my experience, is rarely true to life. Certainly it happens, but sociopaths don’t really make up that large a percentage of our population. (See the National Institute for Mental Health for specific data). I’m not sure Darrows entirely pulled off what she was going for, as mentioned above this would have been easier to swallow had we seen more redeeming behavior or had more insight into Quinn’s feelings. But overall, I find this to be surprisingly feminist take on the mean girl trope.