She only notices how she can use what she perceives to be raw power: the “loud comments” and the derogatory adjective, “slutty,” forming without much thought about what’s underneath her ideas. Women really do slut-shame each other much more vigorously than men slut-shame women. At one moment, Addy says, “Beth and I made loud comments across the gym about how Brinnie’s slutty sister got caught making out with the assistant custodian until Brinnie ran off to the far showers to cry.”

None of them recognize their own hypocrisy, and they probably wouldn’t care if someone did point that hypocrisy out to them. They want what most of us want, but that doesn’t stop them from castigating others.

The novel’s prime source of antagonism is between Beth and the new Coach, whom Beth describes this way: “Colette French Sounds like a porn star, a classy one who won’t do anal.” Beth tells us more about herself than she does about Coach: that she thinks about porn stars, that she has a dirty yet moralistic streak at the same time. And the cheerleaders never quite ask if they should want to be anything more than “sexy beyotches.” They certainly have a strong sense of sexuality, although sexuality in the novel is primarily used to express dominance among the various girls (and their Coach), rather than as an end in itself.

Plus, contrary to what Addy thinks, it’s unlikely that “Everybody loved us.” The cheerleaders in Dare Me love themselves much more than any outsiders could possibly love them. It was enough.īut part of life is the “it” not being enough: skills count, more than merely being admired. We’d just streak ourselves with glitter and straddle jump and shake our asses to Kanye. Beth, however, is stripped of her captaincy by the new Coach, who demands more from the girls than their previous coach:īack then, we could hardly care, our moves so sloppy and weak. Her primary aspiration, however, is to maintain her status on the cheer squad, chiefly as the “lieutenant” of the captain, Beth, who is the chief bad girl and doer of drugs, men, and deeds that Addy might want to do but can’t bring herself to. It’s unfair to summarize a novel like this- Lord of the Ring could be reduced to, “Midget chucks ring into mountain local vagrant crowned king”-but it’s also useful, because interesting novels usually have characters who are trying to learn something about the world and who have larger ambitions to do things that will have more than just local effects.Īddy narrates the novel in an insistent present-tense voice that offers a sense of immediacy. There’s something compelling about Dare Me that shouldn’t be compelling: stripped of its narrative voice, Dare Me is about teenage cheerleaders and their coach, who may as well be a teenager, competing to be the neighborhood’s queen bee.

Dare me book series megan abbott