![]() ![]() ![]() But, unlike her brother, Paisley hasn’t been crushed into fearful acceptance by the experience. Paisley and Beau have both had a traumatic upbringing, witnessing their mum’s death and being farmed out to separate schools by a manipulative grandmother who hides their father’s letters and steals from their trust fund. In her first novel, Pretty Bad Things (2010), CJ Skuse sketches a bright, acidic portrait of Paisley, one half of the teen Wonder Twins, who go on a crime spree through Vegas en route to find their long-lost dad. Where are the female Tom Ripleys – or even the Patrick Batemans – of YA? At long last, I’ve noticed some mean girls – not quite a monstrous regiment, but a sinister strike force, at least – popping up in YA and older middle grade (MG) fiction. And dislikable, amoral, even monstrous girls are especially few and far between – girls in fiction, as in real life, it seems, are under more pressure from their readership than their male counterparts to be “nice”. Likability, someone to root for, victims of clear-cut injustice – classic main characters tend to the plucky and put-upon, à la Harry Potter or Sara Crewe. Antiheroes don’t feature in a lot of kids’ or young adult fiction. ![]()
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