Jawbone

in a nutshell: The story follows a group of 6 teenaged friends from a rich private girls' school in Ecuador, who are led by a cunning and beautiful leader into evermore dangerous dares and violent 'games,' while building a dark theology in an abandoned building where they share horror stories, make one another bleed, and perform rituals to a drag queen White God of their creation. Among their victims of sly torture is a young new teacher, riddled with anxiety and PTSD from a violent attack at the hands of her former students, who dresses entirely in her dead mother's clothes and is slowly losing her mind (and the leader of the 6 girls is all too happy to help her along.) Mucho girlie violence ensues.

main themes: The danger of being a mother, the horror of being a daughter, the inextricable bonds between the two. The so-intense-it's-terrifying bonds of young female friendships, how deeply we love our girl friends and how many lines we cross for each other throughout the changes in our relationships.

the vibes: The cannibal cult of Yellowjackets but with the girls from Gossip Girl, who have a Heavenly Creatures kind of friendship in a We're All Going to the World's Fair type of game.

the writing: Absolutely terrific at ratcheting up tension, fear, and anxiety over the steadily growing horror throughout the chapters, while dropping clues for the perverse mysteries the characters are caught up in. At times more verse than prose, full of academic and pop culture references alike. At one point three different narrative threads were woven through the pages of one scene, creating a creepy rhythm between dialogue from a dangerous party, one of the girls remembering a fucked up thing she did with her childhood friend, and a narrative explanation of the history of viral creepypastas.

The book begins as a 15-yr-old girl wakes up on the floor of a dirty cabin in the jungle, realizing she is tied up and has been kidnapped by one of her teachers. From there, the mysteries and terror unravel and grow as Ojeda reveals the machinations of the girls' dark work. Some spoilery details follow, but this book is honestly best encountered with no preamble.

The Terror of Teenage Girls

''If we were bad girls, we are even more vile when we grow up.''

Teenage girls will forever fascinate me, those heavenly and horrible creatures, in the middle of becoming what they need to survive in a world that hunts and mocks them. Being a teenage girl felt so intense and nebulous and dangerous and flighty. Scary. Fun. Like if you closed your eyes tight enough, there were no consequences.

So I am in love with Ojeda’s chapter that takes the form of an essay dropped on the desk of the tortured teacher from the leader of the girls, Annalise. In it, she explains the origins of her White God, and why being a pubescent girl is being in 'the white age.' And what scares their teacher, Miss Clara, about them, why she recoils from the girls, is this whiteness.