I read about 60% of this book before declaring it a DNF in my life. I hate DNFing books, but I just couldn't go through with it anymore.

I requested this book specifically because I have 2 cheerleader nieces, so I'm pretty aware of what happens on CL teams. The fact that Jenna keeps going back to revenge just doesn't sit right with me - cheerleading is an amazing sport of group effort and inclusion, not this backstabbing and revenge scneario.

I think the overall story was interesting but the execution was a total mess. the tone was all over the place and could never find what direction it wanted to go in telling the story. I only could suffer through a little bit before I had to DNF.

Hello Again!

Recently I finished reading two books! This is the second of those two books with the first being With the Fire on High (my review for that should already be posted). I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Squad as an ebook ARC through Netgalley a while back and honestly, I had not gotten to it due to illness but I am catching up on my Netgalley and I am so happy to be doing so!

SPOILERS AHEAD

Jenna is a cheerleader in her junior year of high school. Her friends are the other cheerleaders and more specifically her best friend Raejean is a cheerleader too! The girls are inseparable until things get weird between them and Jenna starts to feel disconnected not just from Raejean but from the whole team. It seems like no one cares if she is at the parties or hanging out or in on the group texts. Then her best friend starts hanging out more with another cheer girl than with her and Jenna wants mean girl style revenge on her. Jenna feels hurt, betrayed, and confused as to why Raejean has dropped her so fast, she has tried texting and offering her rides but nothing is working. So once Jenna gets her revenge (I am not saying what it is but she does get her revenge on Raejean or what she calls revenge) she feels like she can no longer be on the squad, she feels more like an outsider than ever. No one has officially kicked her off the team but things no longer feel right or good. So once she is off the team she has nothing to do, she spends most of her time staring at her ceiling that is until her brother Jack (who is older by a year) invites her to hang out with his friends and Jenna is introduced to the world of LARPing. Which holds many surprises for Jenna!

Being honest I enjoyed this story, it was a quick read, it had a strong plot and characters and I would definitely read it again. The only thing that for me was a little not okay was when Jenna started wanting revenge on Raejean (I understood she was hurt but just unfriend the girl). What she did in the book and some of the things she said in the book are crazy dark and a little too far. Other than this plot point, I enjoyed the book overall and I am giving it 3.5 stars on Goodreads!

I was really interested in this book because of the synopsis, but I think I might have hyped it up
too much before starting it. Unfortunately, I ended up DNFing this book because I found the
main character to be incredibly insufferable and genuinely unlikeable. I couldn’t get into the
storyline because we were stuck in her head, and I just couldn’t get past that. I was really
excited for this one, but unfortunately, it just didn’t live up to my own hype.

Great fun read, I enjoyed the book very much and the writing style was nice and easy to read. It was written so well that i did not realize how far along I was.

Review: Squad by Mariah MacCarthy
4/29/2019 0 Comments

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Squad
Mariah MacCarthy
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
​March 12, 2019
⭐⭐⭐
This darkly comic debut novel by an award-winning playwright is like Mean Girls meets Heathers with a splash of Bring it On.

Jenna Watson is a cheerleader. But it’s not some Hollywood crap. Cheerleaders are not every guy’s fantasy; they are not the “popular girls” or the “mean girls” of Marsen High School. They’re too busy for that. They're literally just some human females trying to live their lives and do a perfect toe touch. But that all changed after Raejean stopped talking to Jenna and started hanging out with Meghan Finnegan. Jenna stopped getting invited out with the rest of the squad and she couldn’t tell if it was on purpose or if it was all in her head.

At times heartbreaking, at others hilarious, Squad follows Jenna through her attempts to get revenge on Raejean and invent a new post-cheer life for herself through LARPING (live action role-playing) and a relationship with a trans guy that feels like love—but isn't. In the, end Jenna discovers that who she is is not defined by which squad she's in.

I was drawn in by "darkly comic," but didn't find either of those in Squad. Luckily, other elements of the book made up for it.

The good: MacCarthy nailed the high school hierarchy, and how to work around it and change your place in it. She subverted the usual mindset that is against social mobility, which I approve of. Her messaging in Jenna's characterization around combining interests (cheerleading and LARPing are stereotypically incompatible) and Jenna's path towards viewing herself as a whole was really valuable and I appreciated it.

Good messaging! Very true to life around being a teenage girl. MacCarthy also nailed the mindset of a girl who's been frozen out without a reason, the anxiety and questioning. Jenna's reactions were questionable, and I sometimes found her an unrealistic character because of what lengths she went to, but in all I liked this aspect.
​
The bad: Jenna's reactions! Some of her actions were just plain weird, and I was thrown. I think in order for a character to be morally grey, her "negative" actions must still be somewhat realistic, and Jenna's weren't. As an antagonist towards other characters, she crossed boundaries in a strange way that I didn't quite enjoy, and it was uncomfortable.

Overall: 3/5 stars. Recommended for those interested in a coming-of-age story and female characters with depth.

I had to did-not-finish this title. I really liked the blurb, and I felt the story had potential. I read the first chapter and instantly thought it was juvenile and reminded me of The Clique series.

I continued reading on and I honestly don’t feel like story was going anywhere. I felt like there was no plot. Just a bunch of girls being hateful.

I know somewhere in this story, weaves around the nonsense, there’s a few heartwarming concepts... based on reviews I’ve read. It just isn’t enough to keep me reading.

I received a digital copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review.

When I first started this book I wasn't sure I would like it but it ended up being really good. Jenna's character took a little getting used to because her behavior is little bizarre but the story of her growing up really spoke to the challenges we all face as teens.

After embarking on a creepy, twisty journey with Will Haunt You, I decided I needed a moment of respite from all things horror (at least in books) so I decided to give this book a try. Although when I told a friend of mine that I was reading a book about cheerleaders he said, “Why would you do that? They’re scary!” So I wasn’t sure what to expect. From the first page, I was hooked. Not because anything compelling was really happening (there wasn’t much action throughout the whole novel), but I just loved Jenna’s voice and her way of telling a tale of friendship gone awry. How one single social misstep can instantly make you the outcast of your own group (which I’m sure most of us can relate to, to some extent if you’ve ever been in high school or ya know, just been a teenager).

So Jenna finds herself having to learn to navigate school life without her best friend Raejean, and not being part of the cheerleading squad anymore (something dramatic happens, that’s all I can say as to why she’s no longer in the squad). But I love how this novel explored bullying in a way that wasn’t so over the top, but rather how ignoring someone can in itself be its own form of bullying too. Also, kudos for the author for including a transgender (female to male) character. I haven’t seen that many transgender characters in YA novels, so that was refreshing. The book overall was an easy read and although it wasn’t one of the best I’ve read this year, I did enjoy it, mostly for the realism of teenage relationships with their parents and siblings, dating, and friendships.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was a fun contemporary story. I loved that this book followed high school cheerleaders as this is a population of people I don’t often see represented in YA literature. I would definitely recommend this to high school students.

I still don't know how to boil my thoughts and feelings about this book into a coherent review. Squad tackles a lot of real-world issues, from a serious friend break-up to trying to understand who you are outside of a group who defines who you are. I loved the different kinds of people in this book, from cheerleaders to an absent dad.

Jenna struggles to define who she is outside of cheerleading and her best friend. I can see how their struggles and questioning can help teens in similar situations. I struggled when I left color guard to see who I was outside of the sport and that group of people. I also struggled when I stopped being friends with my best friend of 10 years. I could see these similar feelings and struggles between my experience and Jenna's.

I could also see how relatable her struggle to understand what happened between her and her best friend would be to others and teens. Who iced who out first? Who was responsible for the falling out? Was it her fault? Should she have spoken up about what was bothering her sooner? Who was she outside out her best friend?

I struggle with the dark tone of it, however. It seems she is being portrayed as crazy and/or losing her mind. I didn't like that aspect of the book and I don't think mental health is something to play around with. She could have been questioning her whole life without cutting her best friend's hair off and dumping water on people. She seemed to become paranoid and lose all sense of her self-control. This tarnishes the lessons we were to learn from this book and I don't think it fits with the other aspects of her personality. I think the book could've been just as effective, if not more so if this part of the book was taken out or reworked. This isn't a thriller or a horror novel, so I don't really understand the dark tone.

Overall, I think it has great characterization and a relatable plot for teens, but I can't get over the "dark" tone.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (BYR) through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.*

The Squad is a fast-paced contemporary young adult novel that covers a lot of things--too many, and too fast. Jenna is a junior in high school and her life is cheereleading (very well presented here) and her best friend Raejean. But suddenly, Raejean doesn't seem to want to be friends anymore and Jenna doesn't know what to do. While Mariah McCarthy does a great job of exploring the intense emotions Jenna feels, cycling from grief to what she thinks is acceptance and then to rage, the plot spins out when Jenna quits cheerleading. Jenna becomes involved with her brother's LARP group and starts talking to James. She and James get close, and Jenna accepts that James is trans, and planning to fully transition once he's eighteen (James mother won't let him take testosterone before then) -- and then James dumps her. Meanwhile, Jenna is really getting into LARP, making friends with her brother's friends, becoming friends with someone who is a cheerleader (and who also LARPs), repairs her relationship with her mother, deals with her brother finding out he'll be going to Michigan for college just as they've started to really get along, deciding she wants to return to cheerleading at least for her coach's farewell dinnner, makes peace with Raejean for real, decides she wants to be friends with James, and--and it's too much! Just as Jenna's relationship with James could have and should have taken up much more of The Squad, there are so many great plot points that are brought up, quickly developed, and then just--bam! The Squad is over. It would have been so much more and been so much stronger if only two or three of the multitudes of plot points had been focused on. As it is, it's a book that wants to do everything and ends up doing nothing because it has spread itself too thin.

3.5 stars, rounded up

Cheerleading. Best friends. LARPing. Falling in and out of relationships. All in a sophomore year, right?

Holy moly do I have feels about this book. I'm so torn.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

When I first saw the cover of this book, I thought this was going to be a story about cheerleading, but it's really a tale of one girl's struggle, when she loses her "squad".

Jenna couldn't figure out when or why it all began, but her teammates were icing her out. Between the in-jokes, the backhanded compliments, and the unanswered text messages, Jenna knew she was now on the outside looking in. All of this was very painful for Jenna, but the worst part was how her long-time best friend, Raejean, abandoned her.

I won't lie, Jenna's reaction to all of these changes was FAR from positive. She made a bunch of really questionable decisions, but I was still able to empathize with her, because I had experienced this sort of thing first hand. It hurts, it starts to make you question yourself, and I thought MacCarthy did an excellent job capturing the fear, anxiety, desperation, and insecurities Jenna experienced.

I was a little worried about this story, because the first half of the book was kind of dark and bleak, but then Jenna sort of comes to terms with her situation. In an effort to atone for her bad behavior, she cuts herself off from the cheer squad, and that was when she really started to figure out who she was. She began to expand her circle of friends and renewed her relationships with her brother and mother. She made new friends and even picked up some new interests (LARPing!). It was great to see her grow, heal, acknowledge her mistakes, and make an effort to achieve some closure.

Overall: An interesting look at fading friendships, getting through tough times, and finding yourself.

At times dark and at others uplifting, Squad follows high school cheerleader Jenna in the ups and downs of cheer, friendship break-ups, romance, and self-discovery. Squad is an interesting story that’s enjoyable, albeit a bit disjointed.

Right off the bat, Squad intrigued me with its portrayal of cheerleading as a serious athletic sport. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about cheerleading, (I’ve never even gone to a school that had cheerleaders.) but it seemed like the author had some sort of cheer experience, and I found it really interesting to see this portrayal of the sport that deviates from the stereotypical view of cheerleaders. The kids in this book are serious athletes, and they’re human beings just like everyone else.

Even aside from the portrayal of teenage cheerleaders specifically, the author did a good job of showing the ups and downs that come with adolescence. The book talks about loneliness, uncomfortable and complicated social situations, and shifting friendships, which brings me to the next point…

This is a book about, among other things, a falling out between inseparable friends. This is a super interesting topic, and I loved seeing Jenna branch out and make new friends, and I also liked how Jenna and Raejean’s (Jenna’s ex-best friend) thread wrapped up at the end.

As far as other relationships, I felt like Jenna’s relationship with her brother could’ve been developed a bit more, but I did like the connection between these siblings and how they gradually became closer over the course of the book. After Jenna quits cheer, she starts doing LARP with her brother and his friends—it’s short for Live Action Role-Playing. I’d never even heard of this before, and I found this aspect of the book to be kind of interesting and unusual.

Some parts of the romance weren't my favorite—I didn’t have any problems with the pairing or the love interest or anything like that, but the romance was only present for such a short period that it felt disjointed with the rest of the book. I was surprised at how short it was, which I guess could be realistic for a relationship, especially a high school one, but its placement felt a bit odd and disconnected in relation to the rest of the story.

The drug and alcohol content was another aspect of Squad that wasn't my favorite. I know that plenty of high schoolers engage with drugs and alcohol, but there was just kind of a lot of it and it seemed excessive. And, as another reviewer pointed out, it felt odd that such serious athletes were able to use such harmful substances and not really suffer any consequences.

Overall, this wasn’t my most favorite book ever, but I found many its facets to be compelling, and I think a lot of readers with enjoy this authentic portrayal of the struggles of high school friendships.

3.5 stars

A truly humorous satire that was both cruel and relatable. Jenna is the spitting representation of Cady from Mean Girls and she definitely is the a**hole she calls herself. It's shocking sometimes to see how dark someone can get when feeling hurt and abandoned - poor Jenna needed a slap in her face to realize she herself was the root of it all. I loved the introduction of the LGBTQ community here - it was a subtle yet prominent feature for a YA novel.

I really liked parts of this novel and other parts I just totally couldn't relate with. Overall if wound up being not for me. The writing is good, but the plot could use some work. I don't read a lot of contemporaries, but I felt drawn to this one and really enjoyed it for a while, but then it just got too depressing to read. I'm sure plenty of people would love it, but it was just NOT for me.

y I really liked this book, mostly because i found the main character incredibly realistic and easy to emphasize with. Jenna is a cheerleader who in her junior year starts feeling a distance between her and her best friend. She tries so hard to fix it, and nothing works, she just makes it worse. Jenna has to figure out who she is without cheerleading or her old friends. I was confused at times whether it was supposed to be a thriller, romance or just contemporary fiction, the book itself seems a bit confused, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. As a plus there is great representation of LGBT folks

Unfortunately, this felt very little kid and adolescent. I got through the first 6 chapters and had to put it down. There is nothing keeping me to read this. The characterization is not keeping me interested at all.

I received an e-arc of this book from Macmillan Children's Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

This was an amazing read. Squad is a young adult contemporary about what it's like when friends grow apart and to learn what it's like to be your own person. Jenna learns the hard way that it's not easy to fall out with your best friend, someone who practically lives in your own skin. Through the falling out, she starts to find out who she is and who she's meant to be, all while trying new things and hanging around new people.

This was the first contemporary I've read in a long time where it actually felt like I was inside a teenager's mind. Most others the narration always seems a little too mature, but with Jenna we got to see the pettiness, the melodrama, and the growth that sophomores in high school go trough to find out who they really are and who their friends are.

I'd give Squad by Mariah MacCarthy a 4/5 stars.