The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

UPDATE: I helped create a trailer for this book! You can view it here.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Frankie Landau-Banks goes from "Bunny Rabbit" to criminal mastermind during her sophomore year at the exclusive Alabaster Prep boarding school.

When Frankie starts dating Matthew Livingston, she feels that she has been given a window into his world of confident privilege and power. And she desperately wants to belong in her own right, not just as a pretty girl the boys underestimate. She discovers the existence of the male-only Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds and secretly begins pulling their strings, orchestrating larger and more elaborate pranks.

This is one of my favorite YA books. Frankie is smart, her pranks are genuinely clever and funny, and she is as conflicted and occasionally insecure as any other ordinary high-school girl. Unlike most high school girls, though, she knows exactly what she wants and often has a good idea of how to get it. (This is also the book that introduced me to P.G. Wodehouse, for which I shall be eternally grateful.)

Written like an anthropological study (or a profile of the criminal mind at work), The Disreputable History chronicles one ambitious, smart girl's year of coming into her own. A book club or an English class could probably spend a quarter analyzing the power dynamics at play, Frankie's ideas about rebellion against the Panopticon, or how each character (male and female) represents a different response to patriarchy.

What to read after you're finished:

The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver by E. Lockhart - for your next fix of clever, feminist chick lit.

The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, edited by Gregory Sholette - "interventionists" create art to bring awareness to issues of injustice (Lockhart cites this in the afterward).

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse - For a hilarious look into the machinations of the Old Boys' Club by "a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his phrases." Amen.

Team Human by Justine Larbalesteir - another YA writer who consistently writes strong and believable female heroines.

A few of my favorite quotes from the book:

• "Secrets are more powerful when people know you've got them," said Mr. Sutton. "You show them the tiniest edge of your secret, but the rest you keep under wraps."
• "It had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations."
• "She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious."
• "Frankie did not accept life as it was presently occurring."
• “It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can’t see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.”

Team Human

Team Human by Justine Larbalestier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When her best friend falls for the hot undead guy in their class, Mel desperately tries to keep lovestruck Cathy from becoming a vampire herself - a decision that could be Cathy's last.

How can you not love a book with the tagline "Friends don't let friends date vampires"? For everyone who feels guilty about reading Twilight and its sequels in two days, do yourself a favor and try the Team Human antidote: a story about female friendship, free will, and how being smitten doesn't necessarily mean you've lost your mind or given up who you are.

There are a few stories at work here: that of Cathy and her new boyfriend who is about a century too old for her; Mel's other best friend Anna, who has asked Mel to help her find out more about her father's decision to run away with a vampire; and Mel's own romance with a funny, charming guy who happens to live with vampires. When she meets Kit, who has been raised in a vampire shade, Mel find her prejudices challenged and her own romance developing.

Mel is a little confused about boys, but who doesn't make bad romantic choices in high school? She also has to overcome her anti-vampire prejudices (except thankfully not the reasonable ones, like being nervous around apex predators) and figure out what she wants in her own life, too. She's fiercely loyal and not afraid to speak her mind or act when she thinks her friends are in trouble. In short, she's the anti-Bella: a funny, feminist ABC (American-born Chinese) who cares about her friends and has definite opinions on why it might suck to become a blood-sucking immortal.

Larbalesteir and Rees Brennan take a spoofy idea and weave it into a surprisingly moving story that has a lot of heart.

Larbalesteir has several other books with awesome female protagonists, including Liar, which was recently part of a controversy that had to do with a whitewashed cover (more at her blog. She's also married to fellow author Scott Westerfield, whose sci-fi dystopia Uglies is a best-seller, along with the steampunk Leviathan trilogy.

Sarah Rees Brennan is the author of The Lyburn Legacy trilogy, which begins with Unspoken.