Girls with Sharp Sticks

Suzanne Young always has compelling, twisty stories that are a marvel of creativity and social commentary, with heroines that question authority and the status quo, but her previous novels are not what I would call angry novels. Girls With Sharp Sticks most definitely is an angry novel, and it makes me love Ms. Young even more than I already did.

Girls With Sharp Sticks is an awakening of the best kind. It is an awareness of the characters, and of the reader, of the pervasiveness of rape culture and patriarchy bent on subjugating women. It starts and ends with Mena, a student at the prestigious Innovations Academy, who parrots the school philosophy like the mindless student she is until she realizes that something is not quite right with show more the philosophy she so admired. Meanwhile, you as the reader already know something is not right as your blood boils at everything Mena learns and accepts. Everything about Innovations Academy is slimy and wrong, and you want nothing more than to tear the wool off Mena’s eyes so that she can see the truth.

However, as Ms. Young is so wont to do, you care about Mena too much to be that cruel to her; having her face the truth all at once would be akin to telling a five-year-old that there is no Santa Claus with no warning and no suspicion on the child’s part. So you root for Mena’s every act of defiance, no matter how small, and cheer every discovery she makes. Except something happens as Mena makes each discovery. Mena gets angry. When Mena gets angry, the story changes completely. No longer is it a boarding school mystery. Instead, it becomes a bit of a revenge story wherein the rules you thought you knew do not apply, and all you can do is hold on for the ride as Mena and her friends go on a rampage for answers and justice.

Through Mena and Girls With Sharp Sticks, Ms. Young channels all the rage and terror you have ever felt at being told to be a good girl, that boys will be boys, at being ignored in the classroom or the conference room, for being interrupted, for being called a bitch, for being told to smile, for being told to cover up, for being told you don’t cover up enough. She channels it for you and allows you some relief at watching Mena fight for all the times you couldn’t. It is every bit as empowering as the other angry novels, but it is also cathartic to watch the girls become aware and then take action. It might not be as easy in the real world to do something like what Mena and her friends do, but it certainly feels good to watch someone do something. show less

'Girls With Sharp Sticks' by Suzanne Young (2019), is about girls at the 'Innovations'Academy' who are being taught to be 'better girls', obedient, respectful, compliant and pretty. It's the story of one of the girls, Mena, waking up to the fact that the Academy is not what it claims to be and claiming her rage at what is being done to her and the other girls at the school.

The plot and pace of this book make is a compelling, I-have-to-know-what-happens-next and Oh-no-they're-not-going-to-do-that-are-they? thriller.

The first person narrative lets us share Mena's journey, investing the reader in Mena's struggle and binding us to her emotionally. It also lets the reader see, and often rage at, the gap between what Mena sees as going on show more and what we think is happening. Initially, it seems that Mena is just too nice, too passive, too inexperienced and too trusting to work out what's going on. Then, slowly we realise that Mena isn't naturally like that, the Academy is making her like that.

I'm not going to disclose what's really happening at the Academy as part of the fun of the book is guessing the nature of the malfeasance, being sure you've got it right and then having to guess again, so I'm going to focus on how reading the book made me feel.

The dominant emotion I felt throughout this book was rage. Rage at the men running the Innovations Academy. Rage at the men funding them. Rage at the soul-crushing cruelty of what is being done to these girls.

One of the things that fueled my rage is how believable the Academy is. The lessons being given on how to be 'better girls' are not so far from what would have been taught in a Finishing School sixty years ago. Although the teachers at the Academy are misogyny incarnate, weak, angry men who hide their hate for women behind a mask of patriarchal concern expressed through punishment, they are not cartoon monsters, they are the kind of men we've all met. Giving men like this with absolute authority over girls like Mena is deeply wrong. This is the core truth that the rest of what is happening at the Academy simply amplifies.

My rage as a reader was like a bow wave, always a little ahead of the rage that slowly builds in Mena, moving from disquiet to outrage. I loved Mena's rage. By the time I was a quarter of the way through the book when I still wasn't sure what was going on, I was already looking forward to the revenge I assumed Mena and the girls would eventually take on these men.

I loved the idea of that a poem, 'Girls With Sharp Sticks', was the wake-up call that unlocked Mena's ideas and emotions, that let her see who she was and what she wanted.

The plot went into a different and better direction than I expected. When Mena awoke, her focus wasn't on revenge. Her focus wasn't on men at all. Her focus was on regaining her own agency and on freeing and protecting the other girls.

What the Academy was really about was also more complicated and more interesting that I'd initially assumed and I admire the skill with which I was led and misled to the journey's conclusion.

If you're looking for a light, exciting, speculative fiction read, 'Girls With Sharp Sticks' will deliver it to you but along the way, my guess is that you'll also find that you're reading something that challenges the humanity of patriarchal misogyny and makes you question what a 'better girl' would really be like.

The book works very well as a standalone, but it also made me hungry for more, so I'm glad to see that the sequel 'Girls With Razor Hearts', is already available.

Caitlin Davies does a great job at narrating 'Girls With Sharp Sticks'. I recommend listening to the audiobook if you can. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.


https://soundcloud.com/simonschuster/girls-with-sharp-sticks show less

My goodness, this was a thrilling (horrifying) read. From the start there was a sense of foreboding which only intensified the more I read. Mena annoyed me at the start but she became a worthy protagonist as she began to grow, question and finally understand what was really happening to the girls in the Academy. While it was obvious to the reader, it took Mena and her friends longer to come to the same realisation.

There were parts of "Girls with Sharp Sticks" that were quite shocking. The lack of boundaries the men displayed, the acts of violence and the 'medical' treatments were chilling and morally wrong. I truly feared for all the girls, especially Mena. However, the strong bond between the girls was the highlight of the novel. They show more kept each other safe and ultimately sane.

While I don't think Jackson was a necessary character, he might play a bigger role in the following books and I am looking forward to reading "Girls with Razor Hearts"

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A takedown of the patriarchy that involves poetry and a girls' boarding school?! Yes, please! I buddy read this trilogy with Katie this month, and it was such fun to go into this world of fiery girls ready to bring down the men who want to keep them demure, docile, and domesticated. This is the best kind of YA thriller featuring a slow burn at the boarding school as the unrest builds. Bonus points for a sweet sapphic relationship, a unity-based community among girls and women, and fantastic narration of the audio by Caitlin Davies. This is my favorite from the trilogy, though I enjoyed them all. My wish would be a companion novel including stories for all of the girls - Valentine, Bree, Sydney, Marcella, Lennon Rose, Mena, and show more definitely Leandra. Recommend! show less

I don't read a lot of YA or science fiction, but I LOVED THIS BOOK! See I am screaming it, so it has to be true. Girls with Sharp Sticks explores the very controlled lives of the young women who live in the elite Innovation Academy. Under the guise of providing the perfect, well-rounded education, students are groomed to be the "perfect girl" for their sponsors by the domineering male faculty. "Perfect girls" being girls who are beautiful, thin, refined, and submissive. After finding a book of handwritten poems under Valentina's mattress, Mena begins to question what is really going on and stops taking her nightly vitamins. She soon begins to recognize that her and her friends are living under extremely oppressive patriarchal show more conditions...and that she has had enough. show less

**** Spoilers*****

Wow! Stepford wives meets Dean Koontz Frankenstein series, teen addition. The synopsis drew me in.......I love nefarious boarding school/academy stories.....but, this was even better than expected!

This was great from the start.....although, being a woman and Mother of 4 girls, this was difficult to read at times......the treatment of the young girls, and the mysogony of the male characters, was infuriating!

This is the first Suzanne Young book I've read, but it won't be the last...halfway through the book I went on Amazon and purchased the other books in this trilogy, as well as the box set of her series "The program".

Bravo for an ending so well done! As apposed to ending on a cliff hanger and feeling dissatisfied...the show more way many series books end....this ended with a sense of closure, but with excitement and potential of things to come.

My only gripe would be the death of Valentine....while I was happy with the Lennon Rose ending, I would have honestly preferred Valentine had survived instead. I find her character more interesting. Fingers crossed that they find some way to bring her back at a later date.

I highly recommend this one for anyone who likes stories of this sort!! Well done Suzanne Young! I'm a new fan!! show less

This being my first Suzanne Young novel, I went into it with hesitant hope I'd love it, and I was pleasantly surprised by how fantastic it was. Very creepy, which I loved. Kind of like The Handmaid's Tale meets Westworld in a young adult setting, with a disturbing boarding school, and friendships that simultaneously warm and break your heart. Kind of slow in some places but once the pace picks up it's completely worth it.

Trigger warning: sexual assault (both on and off page), body horror, violent misogyny, rape culture & victim blaming, torture, body shaming, ableism