Girls with Sharp Sticks

Gr 9 Up–"The only worthy girls are well-behaved girls." So teaches the staff at Innovations Academy, proud of producing the best girls, who are "beautiful, quiet, and pure." Mena trusts the men running the academy to know what's best. Yet when one of her friends disappears, Mena begins to question whether these men are acting out of protection or some darker purpose. Mena's journey out of complacent ignorance is harrowing and exhilarating. Young imbues her narrator with a keen intelligence that has been stunted with drugs and lies, and as Mena rids herself of those impediments, she unravels mysteries and learns how to fight back. This novel, the first in a planned series, is like The Stepford Wives refashioned for teens coming of age in our volatile modern era. The curriculum of the Innovations Academy is basically the ideology of rape culture made explicit: girls are expected to please and acquiesce to men, men cannot be expected to control themselves, and girls who have not remained pure are considered "devalued." Mena's initial parroting of these ideas, slowly giving way to questioning and then outrage, creates a suspenseful and claustrophobic atmosphere that eventually threatens to boil over with vindictive violence. The real fodder for ethical debate arises as Mena and her friends decide how to react to the truths they've uncovered. Readers will be inspired by Mena's awakening, and particularly by the unbreakable and loving sisterhood she shares with her classmates.