Happy Monday!

This week is going to be a short reading week because I’ll be on the road. All three of us are heading to my hometown of Philadelphia for ALA Midwinter.

Are you attending ALA this year?

I’ll be reading a book that Macmillan sent me this week.

What are you reading?

Squad- Mariah MacCarthy

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.