Squad by Mariah MacCarthy (review)

Jenna Watson is a member of a hard-working, cohesive crew of cheerleaders. Suddenly, however, Jenna’s best friend and teammate, Raejean, is distancing herself from Jenna, a move that Jenna takes as a straight-up rejection considering how close the girls have been in the past. Jenna moves from hurt to desperation to, finally, anger, which reaches its destructive climax at a cheer competition. Plenty of books for young readers take on the subject of overt, aggressive bullying; this novel follows a less traveled and surprisingly substantive theme of a girl whose sense of self, forged in a pressure cooker of high expectations, is challenged in ways that cause her to misread situations and transform, momentarily, into a bully herself. Jenna’s intense intimacy with Raejean throughout their childhood leaves her at sea when Raejean seeks to expand their circle. As Jenna cycles through depression and seeks to achieve a similar level of one-on-one intimacy with James, a trans guy who’s a friend of her older brother, her response to his rejection of her showcases how the move toward self-awareness can be both slow and painful. Between frank conversations with her coach, her brother, and Raejean herself, however, Jenna does begin to see how her actions and reactions weren’t as warranted as she thought, and that recovery from bad decisions and making amends are hard but worth it.