Undead Girl Gang, by Lily Anderson

Today at Kirkus, I'm talking about Lily Anderson's Undead Girl Gang:

Undead Girl Gang opens by challenging the hypocrisy so often exhibited at funerals—people publically and performatively mourning the death of a person they didn’t know, didn’t like, and in this case, tormented, in life—and it barrels on from there.

It’s funny and sad and angry and so honest about so many things; it looks at the different facets of grief and loss, like the isolation of grief and how grief often translates to fury. It’s about friendship and expectations and pressure and worry and change and identity; about reaching out and getting slapped down, about reaching out and getting helped up. It’s about the social dynamics of high school; it’s about generational differences in understanding… pretty much everything.

It deals with the practicalities of being resurrected, and while it deals with that topic hilariously, Anderson is never laughing at these girls—yes, even the mean ones—she’s laughing with them. Because, guess what and hooray, girls are also fans of body-related humor.

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