Dare Me (2012)

I liked this murder mystery thriller by Megan Abbott, which I randomly picked off a top 10 list of 2010s novels (at CrimeReads, here). Dare Me features cheerleaders who are mean girls and it has drawn comparisons to Fight Club, Heathers, and Lord of the Flies, mostly by blurbers but also by some reviewers. It’s better than Lord of the Flies, not a comedy black or otherwise like the movie Heathers, and barely related at all to the movie Fight Club, though I don’t know the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Dare Me harks in many ways to cheerleader-positive movies in the 2000s like Bring It On and its sequels. These cheerleaders are not providing pep rally entertainment in support of the boys’ teams, but instead vying for athletic honors in their own right. Abbott includes a lot of technical terms for their various stunts and maneuvers. I didn’t often know what they meant but they added credibility. It’s told first-person by Addy, who is sidekick or lieutenant to chief mean girl Beth. They are the two most gifted cheerleaders athletically. A new coach, called “Coach,” enters the scene to shake it up and provide the conflict and catalysts. Eventually there is a murder that must be solved. It’s really quite a tight and fast-moving read. I didn’t notice until I saw it in a review that Addy writes in the present tense. It didn’t bother me, as it does in less skillful hands, and added to the pervasive gnawing tension. It’s fair to call Dare Me a murder mystery but it’s much closer in tone to a noir—a lot of black hearts in this one, and multiple lambs to the slaughter. It did become more plot-driven in the second half—a real page-turner, in fact—but I think I liked the establishing mood of the first half more. Either way, it’s a lot of fun and has a satisfying finish. I noticed Abbott in an interview saying she came to like the character of Beth best, and in many ways that helped. It could have been very easy to make her merely villainous and I appreciate that she didn’t. On the other hand, first-person narrator Addy is a bit of a sideline character who the story may actually be about—a Nick Carraway type. She really is a protagonist undergoing catharsis, not Beth (or Coach, who wanders pretty close), but even Addy paints herself in the sidekick role. Stepping up finally at the book’s close is not quite enough, let alone soon enough. But these are quibbles. I enjoyed Dare Me as fast-paced mindless thriller with a few credible pretensions to being more. Abbott has novels that are even more acclaimed. Might have to look into them.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.