Yes yes yes! This is what I want from a YA thriller! A feminist message, complicated characters (and not all white cishet - heck yeah), and a "bigger picture". Stella and Ellie were brilliant bookends through which to see the story, and as we teased out secrets from them, both past and present, they really took shape as a unit and as individuals. The pacing lags a bit in the middle, but I think it was really important to see the way everyone turns on each other - and especially the way girls are treated in the wake of a tragedy that disproportionately affects them.
Stella is my favorite kind of protagonist. She's closed off and hard and hungry. And she is that way because any time she opens up, she gets hurt - and because she would rather take on all the pain and suffering than let her younger sister get hurt even once. But no one can protect someone 100% of the time without stifling them.
I actually DNF'd Goodman's debut because it felt too... Inaccessible to the average audience. They Wish They Were Us was all about a wealthy private school and infighting among the most privileged in the entire school. It was overwhelmingly white and cishet and even the scholarship kids were still very privileged. It was hard, as an outsider, to empathize with these characters. Even as someone who went to a wealthy, competitive high school, I struggled. But They'll Never Catch Us was an equalizer - because there were little fragments of so much of reality: personal reputation, town/county/school reputation, rumors, the queer and/or BIPOC experience (acknowledged but not dug into), tense family relationships, sexism, keeping secrets and having them bite you.
I will definitely read Goodman's next.
Stella is my favorite kind of protagonist. She's closed off and hard and hungry. And she is that way because any time she opens up, she gets hurt - and because she would rather take on all the pain and suffering than let her younger sister get hurt even once. But no one can protect someone 100% of the time without stifling them.
I actually DNF'd Goodman's debut because it felt too... Inaccessible to the average audience. They Wish They Were Us was all about a wealthy private school and infighting among the most privileged in the entire school. It was overwhelmingly white and cishet and even the scholarship kids were still very privileged. It was hard, as an outsider, to empathize with these characters. Even as someone who went to a wealthy, competitive high school, I struggled. But They'll Never Catch Us was an equalizer - because there were little fragments of so much of reality: personal reputation, town/county/school reputation, rumors, the queer and/or BIPOC experience (acknowledged but not dug into), tense family relationships, sexism, keeping secrets and having them bite you.
I will definitely read Goodman's next.