The Aussie Zombie

This is my third Courtney Summer's book - although I loved This is Not a Test, it was Cracked Up To Be that really got me interested in reading more of her writing - she has a talent for making me feel sympathetic to the most unlikable of characters, particularly those I would have absolutely despised myself as a teenager, and would really irritate me even now.

Some Girls Are is pretty much the ultimate story of how bitchy and nasty some teenage girls can be.  Regina is best friends with the Queen Bee of her school, Anna, and finds herself in a horrible situation right at the beginning of the story, and it's obvious that things are going to very wrong for Regina.

What Anna and her friends do to Regina are pretty horrendous, but at the same time there are hints that Regina had already done some nasty things herself, particularly to one of her former friends, although Some Girls Are doesn't go into a great deal of detail about it which I found slightly disappointing.  Having said that, perhaps doing that would have made it completely impossible to feel sympathetic towards Regina so it may have been intentional to not revisit it.

If I thought girls were horrible when I was at school, Some Girls Are takes things to a whole new level of bitchy cruelty, but Regina actually takes all of the abuse with a fight-back kind of attitude which I actually admired.  It would have been easier for her to just take everything that was dished out, but she finds her own way to get back at her former friends.  I did find the lack of attention paid by the school staff and her parents a little disturbing, particularly the fact there are only a handful of scenes with Regina and her very distant mother.

The ending was quite abrupt, however it's all forgivable for a book that had my attention completely, and yet there were times it was so intense I wanted to put it down and physically step away.  Shocking and frighteningly easy to imagine it's real, Some Girls Are is another Summers book that I really enjoyed, despite the fact I wanted to slap those horrible girls into next week.