Those Girls

Wealthy, naughty and lively best friends Jinx and Liberty are enjoying the lower sixth form at an exclusive British boarding school, skipping down to the pier for drinks and incensing their sadistic former housemistress with silly pranks. But when manipulative new girl Stella muscles in on Liberty, Jinx feels sure Stella has a dark side and resolves to uncover it. This book’s characters are meant to be over the top (e.g., heavy-drinking housemistress Patricia Gunn enjoys keeping a meticulous punishments book, “a record of every punishment she’d ever dished out and to whom”), but Lawrence’s jokes can border on bad taste or bias (hotheaded, irrational Arabs; fat, ugly lesbians). Stereotypes also arise in a plot line involving the lone Asian character, a math whiz whom Jinx never realizes is actually two girls (surnamed, tellingly, Ho and Mo). Readers may also be put off by the often heartless protagonists: in one scene, a disliked teacher trips, knocking herself unconscious “with a delicious cracking thud.... None of them moved a muscle to help her, of course. They laughed and pointed and exclaimed until it became apparent she was not moving.” The nasty edge here may discourage an audience from following the cast to their next episode. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)