I’m Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl by Gretchen McNeil (review)

Half-Filipino Beatrice and her best friends Gabe and Spencer have been mildly bullied but reasonably comfortable outsiders in their high school. Beatrice has even managed to find herself a boyfriend. Change is afoot, however, when a manic pixie dream girl named Toile comes to town and when Gabe writes an exposé for the school paper that gets a beloved coach fired. The jocktocracy threatens physical reprisal for the coach’s ouster and Beatrice’s boyfriend dumps her for Toile, so Beatrice hatches a plan to save Gabe and get her boyfriend back. Since her formula is based on the calculated application of information theory, she can use it for a scholarship application at MIT if it works. Under her coaching, Gabe goes from low-key gay to flamboyant stereotype, Spencer parlays his broody artist persona into portrait artist of the popular kids, and Beatrice herself becomes Trixie, an MPDG who out-pixies Toile herself. The plan works brilliantly for the dubious goals it aims to achieve, but the collateral damage to authentic friendships is an unplanned and unpleasant consequence that Beatrice has to work hard to remedy. Beatrice’s voice is a key draw here; she’s casually and comically caustic as she shows how smart indie kids could really take over the high school social scene if they had Machiavellian ambitions. The popular kids are as stereotypically stupid and fickle as bookish sorts want them to be, and the moment when Beatrice calls her father out on his boorish behavior warrants a mic drop. High-energy silliness with a soupçon of genuine heart, this will please fans of the rom-com.