Books like The Clique: Second Collection

Five spoiled girls jockeying for position within a prestigious clique during their middle school years make up the cast of these Young Adult books in the The Clique: Second Collection: Invasion of the Boy Snatchers, The Pretty Committee Strikes Back, and Dial L for Loser. Author Lisi Harrison keeps the clique’s clotheshorses galloping from one adventure to the next with lots of cheeky dialogue, sociopathic backstabbing, and whisper campaigns that would do Karl Rove proud. The Octavian Country Day School is known as OCD, a not-so-subtle play on Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. There are more descriptions of shoes, clothes, and jewelry on each page than in an entire department store catalog. After a while, all the focus on materialism feels horribly gluttonous, especially in these dire economic times. Massie Block is the leader of the girls, and she is a walking poster child for a shallow narcissist who is emotionally arrested in a six year old’s me-me-me world. It seems wrong that in these types of mean girl clique books, this kind of behavior is glamorized and accepted as normal. What’s really glossed over—more than their pouty lips—is the effect their cruel behavior has on others, as these girls are nothing more than common bullies. In the first book, Invasion of the Boy Snatchers, Massie has to share her luxe Westchester bedroom with another clique member. Making things worse, one girl’s hot, Spanish cousin arrives and is a serious boyfriend stealer. Other subplots include a disastrous haircut and a traumatizing gain of three pounds. In The Pretty Committee Strikes Back, the clique packs up their iPods and head to Lake Placid for a class trip. In Dial L for Loser, the girls get to audition for a teen blockbuster and ride in the movie studio’s “ah-mazing” jet.The Clique is a pretty popular series, having achieved placement on The New York Times bestseller list. A straight-to-DVD movie was made this year, produced by Tyra Banks, and is out now. It would be cool—if one has to keep seeing girls engage in this traditional covert-aggressive, cruel behavior—to see these cold, selfish tween twits get some kind of comeuppance. But, unlike reality, all ends well with the latest glam new gadget and no nervous breakdowns.Review by Cheryl Reeves