Book Review: P.S. I Loathe You

Title: P.S. I Loathe You

Author: Lisi Harrison

Date: 2p09

Publisher; Little Brown

ISBN: 978-0-316-00680-11

Length: 208 pages

Quote: “We swore off boys for ten whole days, / But it didn’t work so well…Now we’re back in the groove. / Sisters, lock up your brothers!”

By this point in the Clique series, Lisi Harrison and her fans were getting to know all of the Clique girls, not only Massie, the obscenely rich and unfortunately pretty Queen Bee, and Claire, the awkward but teen-starlet-pretty Wannabee. There’s also Alicia, who not so secretly wants to displace Massie, and Kristen, who might actually like Claire’s other friend Layne better even if Massie has ruled her “Layme,” and Dylan, who’s really a better match for the boy Massie’s been “dating” grade-eight style. In this installment each girl is trying to stake her claim to one of the Briarwood boys and, though each girl likes a different boy, their relationships are all so nebulous, so grade eight, that each girl manages to feel jealous of at least one of the others as a possible rival for something that does not actually exist. But it might; the boys are sheltered little social climbers too, and the boys’ and girls’ prep schools do lots of official things together, so each girl can potentially end up chatting and swapping junkfood with her choice of the boys’ soccer team.

Meanwhile, for extra drama, the Pretty Committee decide to become a cheerleading squad. This allows them to recruit a few classmates to fill out the squad (Massie’s Rule #1: “Obey what I say”) and act out their relationship dramas, with the boys and with one another, in front of an audience for maximum comedy effect.

I will say that I’ve liked this series better since reading the volume where Harrison revealed that her original idea was to make fun of some adult co-workers who acted like a junior high school clique. So there is a point, and so, though Claire is the most relatable of these horrible children, she’s not meant to be a role model. Thank you for clarifying that, Lisi Harrison.

I still think middle schoolers in search of a fast-reading series are better off with the Baby-Sitters Club. Seriously. The Baby-Sitters’ relationships may take place on a Lost Planet of Nice where everyone is much nicer than humans normally are, but at least every volume of that series gave the characters a positive, useful tip for something real teenagers do.