I Swear (review)

Worn down after years of being the bullying target of Macie and her crew, Leslie commits suicide. Jake, the boy who has tried for years to convince her that he loves her, is devastated by her death, as is Beth, who participated in the bullying because she didn’t want anyone to know that she, too, was in love with Leslie. The other girls, goaded by a thoroughly unrepentant Macie, at first disavow any responsibility. In fact, student council president Macie turns Leslie’s suicide to her personal advantage by springing into action, setting up support groups and giving speeches to the press about the tragedy and selfishness of teen suicide. A pending civil lawsuit forces the girls to reflect on their behavior until finally Macie is the only one keeping up a pretense of innocence, a move that ultimately works when her state senator father convinces Leslie’s parents to drop the suit in exchange for a profitable business deal. Macie and her father are thoroughly despicable, so much so that they come across as caricatures rather than credible characters, and the power they wield seems equally unreal in light of the strong personalities of the others involved. In particular, Katherine, a newly arrived Southern pageant girl who ends up on Macie’s student council ticket because she’s black as well as beautiful, seems far too grounded to participate in Macie’s machinations. However, the substance of the girls’ narrative contributions and the stories behind each of the undeniably well-developed yet still stereotypical characters make this a compulsively readable melodrama with a timely theme.