The Female of the Species - Mindy McGinnis

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best. The language of violence. While her crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people, even in her small hometown.

But Jack Fisher sees her. He’s the guy all other guys want to be. Guilt over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered hasn’t let him forget Alex over the years, and now her green eyes amid a constellation of freckles have his attention. He doesn’t want to only see Alex Craft; he wants to know her.

So does Peekay, the preacher’s kid. When Peekay and Alex start working together at the animal shelter, a friendship forms and Alex’s protective nature extends to more than just the dogs and cats they care for. Circumstances bring Alex, Jack, and Peekay together as their senior year unfolds.

This cover, this title, and a few great book talks from HarperCollins reps, and I just couldn't help but put this book on the to-read list! And I was NOT disappointed! I should note that if you are a fan of Mindy McGinnis's previous books, especially Not a Drop to Drink, this book is a whole other beast, though McGinnis's signature awesomeness is still evident.

Where the suspense in Not a Drop is quiet and the long range of the narrative arc is drawn out, the action is Female of the Species is very much fast-paced, urgent, and contains a number of shorter narrative arcs that work themselves into the longer run of the novel. McGinnis is seriously talented when it comes to thrillers, revealing just enough to keep readers engaged but not so much that they know what's coming. She also manages to navigate the murky waters of sexual assault, rape, and empowerment.
All around us, people flinch at the word rape, and it's so ridiculous I almost start laughing. [She] is unconscious, her body flowing like water through Branley's arms as she tries to get her into an upright position. Her shirt is torn open so far I can see her bra. Her jeans are unbuttoned. Her jeans are unbuttoned, already pushed a few inches below her underwear. Yet the word rape still jolts people, like maybe these guys were just dragging her out to the woods to help [her] take a piss.
I really enjoyed the alternating perspectives, from Jack to Peekay to Alex, and hearing their own approaches to the events in the novel, and how they each react as they find out more about Alex's motivations and deeper, darker, Dexter-like inner demons (there's my alliteration for the day). Even the secondary characters, from Alex's mom, to Officer Nolan, to Branley (Branley perhaps even more than others, in terms of her own self-realizations related to her value and sex appeal). And there's other great discussion from other characters about inequality between different genders:
Boys will be boys, our favorite phrase that excuses so many things, while the only thing we have for the opposite gender is women, said with disdain and punctuated with an eye roll.
Peekay's angst and rebelliousness is actually pretty interesting, and her family situation doesn't fall into cliches of religious intolerance or stereotype. And Jack, though a womanizer and a rather frustrating individual at times, grows and develops throughout the course of events, and his relationship with Alex calls much into question about his personal motivations where sex and love are concerned.

This is a novel that will keep teen readers engaged, guessing, and entertained. I Highly Recommend The Female of the Species because of its appeal as a mystery/thriller, and because it is just so well written and contains some really kick-ass feminist content!

(NOTE: This review is from an Advance Reading Copy - Out Sept. 20, 2016)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Living - Matt De La Peña

Image
The Living  recently received an Honor from the Pura Belpré committee. The award recognizes of a work which best portrays the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for children or youth. As I was at the awards announcements, and having known people who served on the committee in the past, I was intrigued. I had read the winning title and the other honor titles, and was impressed with the choices. So here's my review of The Living : The novel begins with Shy, a young guy working for a snazzy cruise line, offering water to people on the Lido Deck of the ship to combat the heat. Everything is going pretty well until an older gentleman comes out and starts spouting of weird, disconcerting phrases: "You have seen the face of evil."Shy doesn't quite know what to think, so he moves on to a couple of ladies on the other side of the deck. Just as he's handing them their water bottles, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and realizes the old guy h...
Read more

The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg

Image
Max: Chill. Sports. Video games. Gay and not a big deal, not to him, not to his mom, not to his buddies. And a secret: An encounter with an older kid that makes it hard to breathe, one that he doesn't want to think about, ever. Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart. Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk -- to get the thing they want the most. This is a phenomenal book, in my humble opinion. There aren't too many books dealing with male sexual abuse, particularly in YA. Sex and sexuality are messy parts of young adulthood, but what this book does really well is discuss consent and the ways in which physical cues can be misinte...
Read more

Girls Like Us - Gail Giles

Image
I have now gone out and made sure that I have all of the books longlisted for the National Book Award. I read and reviewed a number of these previously, so now I have five left to read and review. This is one of those five (but would I expect anything less from the fabulous team at Candlewick?) Girls Like Us  is a unique novel in a number of respects, most notably in the fact that both protagonists are identified (and self-identified) as mentally disabled in some way. Biddy has a learning disability that she was born with, while Quincy is a young girl who is disabled due to the fact that her mother's boyfriend hit her in the head with a brick, disfiguring her and damaging her brain. Once the two girls graduate from school, they move into a house together, becoming caregivers for both each other and an older woman, Elizabeth. The two must rely on each other for comfort, knowledge, and emotional strength, and Elizabeth manages to help them along the way. While I had moments of wo...
Read more