High School Kids Behaving More Than Badly
I was in a very frustrated state when I started reading They Wish They Were Us, our pick for October’s #TotallyTeenBuddyRead. This book has nothing to do with the election, or Brett Kavanaugh’s official decision saying mail-in votes can’t be counted in Wisconsin if they’re received after election day. But I’d just watched Seth Meyers disseminate pieces of Kavanaugh’s argument and my husband asked if I was more upset about the ruling or the fact that it was badly written. They Wish They Were Us highlights why for me it’s a little of both.
It’s scholarship-kid Jill’s senior year at an exclusive prep school, and everything should be perfect. She’s part of an official group of Players who have access to a database of test answers and college admittance officials and psychiatrists willing to make diagnoses for extra standardized test time. But Jill isn’t over her best friend’s death during an initiation gone wrong Freshman year. Shaila was murdered and her boyfriend Graham confessed to the crime. But when Graham’s sister texts Jill claiming Graham’s innocent, Jill can’t help but wonder what really happened to Shaila.
This book is really well written. Everyone in our discussion last night agreed. But many of us also felt that the mystery was pretty easy to solve. What I kept coming back to was the insane privilege of these kids. They were cheating their way through school, cheating their way into college, doing terrible things to each other including hints at sexual assault. Even the “detention center” wealthy Graham was in for murder had tiki masala night. And I know this was fiction, but it made me think about all the really qualified kids who work and don’t get into Ivy league schools because their spots are stolen by cheaters. And then those cheaters end up in legacy jobs that they may or may not actually want which is another thing the book covers, and, more importantly, that they may or may not be good at. And then we end up with unqualified presidents and badly researched and written Supreme Court decisions that we all have to live with.
I’m not sure if I loved this book or if this rage was the author’s intended takeaway, but it’s a book that will stay with me.
It’s scholarship-kid Jill’s senior year at an exclusive prep school, and everything should be perfect. She’s part of an official group of Players who have access to a database of test answers and college admittance officials and psychiatrists willing to make diagnoses for extra standardized test time. But Jill isn’t over her best friend’s death during an initiation gone wrong Freshman year. Shaila was murdered and her boyfriend Graham confessed to the crime. But when Graham’s sister texts Jill claiming Graham’s innocent, Jill can’t help but wonder what really happened to Shaila.
This book is really well written. Everyone in our discussion last night agreed. But many of us also felt that the mystery was pretty easy to solve. What I kept coming back to was the insane privilege of these kids. They were cheating their way through school, cheating their way into college, doing terrible things to each other including hints at sexual assault. Even the “detention center” wealthy Graham was in for murder had tiki masala night. And I know this was fiction, but it made me think about all the really qualified kids who work and don’t get into Ivy league schools because their spots are stolen by cheaters. And then those cheaters end up in legacy jobs that they may or may not actually want which is another thing the book covers, and, more importantly, that they may or may not be good at. And then we end up with unqualified presidents and badly researched and written Supreme Court decisions that we all have to live with.
I’m not sure if I loved this book or if this rage was the author’s intended takeaway, but it’s a book that will stay with me.