Burn for Burn -- Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian
Burn for Burn is narrated by three girls:
Mary: She grew up on Jar Island, but moved away in seventh grade due to the vicious bullying instigated by one boy: Reeve Tabatsky. Now it's their senior year in high school, and she's back.
Lillia: She is a summer-person-turned-local, after making friends on the island in middle school and begging her parents to move there year-round. Due to a horrible experience over the summer—getting drunk with her best friend, Rennie, and two college boys, only to wake up minus her clothes and her virginity—she'll be damned if she lets anything similar happen to her little sister.
Kat: The days when Trashy Townie Kat was best friends with Head Cheerleader Rennie Holtz are long over, and Rennie does her damnedest on a daily basis to make sure that no one remembers them—or, for that matter, that they come from the same socio-economic bracket. After years of bullying and bitchiness, Kat has had it. And that's when she gets the idea:
It hits me right then that I've already won. Because Rennie's best friend is sitting here right now, pledging to help me take her down. And Alex is going to get his, too. I could give two shits about Reeve, but it'll be nice to see him get what's coming to him. It's like a freaking two-for-one deal.
So, three narrators, lots of drama, lots of issues, fast pacing, snappy dialogue, plenty of intrigue, and oh yes: IT'S ABOUT REVENGE. (<--That's your cue to make your best REVENGEFACE.) While a lot of the conflict is pretty ho-hum standard and some of the secondary characters are one-note (especially Rennie), the three main characters are three-dimensional, and the emotional complexity of their relationships with their friends and revengees is well done. And there's SO MUCH conflict that that kind of makes up for the ho-hum feeling.
Fun stuff, and likely to go over well with fans of Pretty Little Liars, et al.
A note! As it's the first in a trilogy, there are lots of threads left dangling: INCLUDING the possibility that Mary has magical powers. But, as I also got the impression that some form of mental illness runs in her family, I felt that the magic stuff was IMPLIED, but not definitively definite. Looking forward to see where the authors go with the series on all fronts!
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Author pages: Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian.
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Book source: ILLed through my library. This book was read for the 2012 Cybils season.