Dare Me

by Megan Abbott

Beth and me wedged tight, jeaned legs pressed against each other. The sound of our own breathing. Before we all stopped believing a tornado, or anything, could touch us, ever.

Addy Hanlon and Beth Cassidy are tough, inseparable, invincible. No pair more charismatic or sophisticated. No pair more dangerous.

But with the fall term, their new coach arrives and things begin to change. She has plans for the cheer squad: all sleek poise and cool command, the girls are soon entirely in her thrall. Faster, harder, higher, thinner, the stakes raised, their world contracting, they compete to risk – everything.

She, meantime, has been crossing a line of her own.

From the brilliant author of The End of Everything, Dare Me is a searing novel about the allure of adulthood and the dark heart of adolescence: the fierce bonds between girls, their bitter rivalries, and their power to transform one another.

• ISBN10: 144722115X
• ISBN13: 9781447221159
• Publish Date: 10 May 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 23 May 2014
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Picador
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

Work hard and believe in yourself. That’s what they always tell you. But that’s not really it at all. It’s the things you can’t say aloud, the knowledge that what you’re doing, climbing high, jumping, hurling yourself into the air, hooking arms, legs around each other to create something that will collapse with the bobble of one knee, a twist of a wrist.
Standing back, Emily said, saying the thing you’re never supposed to say, it’s like you’re trying to kill each other and yourself.

— A daring book about the politics among teenage girls/cheerleaders, of all the things they are willing to do just to be at the top of the pyramid and hold power. Great read!

[Amber]

Addy

Tatum: As a protagonist, I have to say I initially thought Addy was more of a voice for the story to be told through than a fully fleshed out character - which is my issue with a lot of YA main characters actually but I digress - she isn't as fascinating as Beth, for example, often basically embodying her role as 'lieutenant'. By the end of the story though she, for me, had become centre-stage in the story she was telling and I really liked that because it shows how she moves out from her perceived place as a right hand man to take the leadership role.

Lauren: I couldn't stand her; I found her alternately boring and irritating, and I just couldn't connect with her on any level. I also experienced a lot of telling rather than showing, especially with emotions. I was told how she felt a lot of the time, instead of it seeming like she was actually experiencing them. I just didn't understand a single decision she made because it was never shown why she chose to do those things.

Amber: I quite liked Addy in the beginning of the book, before I started to lose interest in both her and the story itself. While her narrative was fairly boring, I would argue that I was bored by the writing style rather than the character herself. Like Lauren, though, I felt no real connection to her and I didn't understand the choices she made.

Other Characters

Tatum: BETH. Ahem, I'm sorry. But BETH. I loved Beth so muhuhuhuch - I loved how she was sharp around her edges and smarter and more devious than any other character in the novel. Beth is the ringleader, the idea girl, the girl the other girls want to be and she embraces that role completely. Her relationship with Addy is the only instance in which we glimpse a more vulnerable side to her but I like that she is a character who doesn't really have a line she won't cross. She's selfish and manipulative and wonderful *heart eyes* I really enjoyed the other cheerleaders because even though they exist mainly in the background of the story they're still intriguing. On the other hand I did spend a lot of time ignoring the Coach because fuck that noise.

Lauren: Um, none? I mean, I get what Tatum is saying about Beth, and I think she could have been an incredibly interesting character, except that nothing of what she does is ever explained, and nor does it really even fit completely into the plot? She was just there, doing wild things and manipulating everyone around her, with this air that there were reasons as to why, but they're never explained.

Amber: I hated them all. Tatum, why are you fangirling over Beth? WHY?! She reminds me of Chloe from My Mad Fat Diary, only with worse character growth. I couldn't stand reading about Beth, and I was rolling my eyes at Addy's descriptions of her. Pull. Yourself. Together. Other characters I hated included Coach (who I was sure was going to turn out to be a sexual predator), the solider guy, and Coach's husband (also on my list of suspicious could-be sexual predators).

Plot

Tatum: I loved it tbh. Cheerleaders and internal girl politics and ambiguous sexuality and murder yes I will have some of that please and thank.

Lauren: If someone could please tell me what the plot actually was, I would be grateful. Was it about cheerleaders going wild due to lack of care and supervision? Was it about a murder mystery? Was it about the fact that if you're a bored teenager in school you're destined to be a bored wife and mother in life? Because there were elements of all of these, and yet none of them are fully realised. I just, I really didn't get the point of this book.

Amber: I don't think the plot went anywhere, and the whole murder/suicide mystery was wasted on these characters and on the author. I think it should have been a much bigger focus than it was, but that might be my morbid fascination playing a part here.

Prose

Tatum: 'There's something dangerous about the boredom of a teenage girl.' I'd never read anything by Megan Abbott prior to Dare Me so I wasn't sure what to expect from the writing but in a lot of ways I was actually really impressed. Abbott has the ability to write the most devastating sentences that are layered in subtext but she isn't a descriptive writer, I don't think. Her prose to me was sparse and bleak but that works for the kind of story she weaved in Dare Me.

Lauren: It was dull. I mean, I will always choose fresh, clean lines over flowery prose any day of the week, but this was written with all the flair of a medicine instruction leaflet. It told me what was happening with barely any inflection (unless you count the stuttering and repetition, which I don't) and just left me with a vague impression that I was being lectured to and everyone had forgotten what the subject was.

Amber: The writing was the worst part of the book for me. I can handle bitchy characters (bloody hell, I loved The It Girl series, I love bitches), and I can handle the lack of character growth most of the time. What I couldn't deal with, however, was the awkward, jumpy, and try-hard writing style. I spent a good while trying to find a decent snippet to explain what I mean, but it was difficult because I found myself wanting to share whole paragraphs. But let's go with this: "I watch him enter the building and then, without even thinking, I follow him, sneakers sneaking across the wet parking lot. Stopped short by the locked lobby doors..." This sounds a lot like something I would have written in middle school, alliteration and all.

Favourite Aspect

Tatum: Beth. And Addy. Beth and Addy together. Teenage girls being terrible and fearsome and awful and glorious.

Lauren: Err.

Amber: Addy, I guess? In the beginning. Okay, I liked the first forty pages the best. That was my favourite aspect.

Least Favourite Aspect

Tatum: The Coach. I refuse to care.

Lauren: Surprisingly for me, it was the pseudo-queer aspect. I say pseudo, because it wasn't really there as a part of anyone's character, but just placed as a possible reason right at the end of the book as to why Beth (and to some extent, Addy) behaved the way they did. It was trite, and it smacked of being a plot device and to me, that's not even close to representation.

Amber: THE FUCKING HORRIFIC PURPLE PROSE

[ibeforem]

“I know what that’s like,” he says. “The way you can be saved without ever knowing you were in trouble.”

This book was odd, but very compelling. I have to admit that I had a hard time putting it down. What’s unusual about that is that there really isn’t a likeable character in the whole book.

Addy and Beth are at the top of the high school social pyramid. But Addy is starting to pull away, and the arrival of a new cheerleading coach makes the divide wider. Beth is a “mean girl” in every sense of the term, often cruel just to amuse herself. Sooner or later, Addy is going to have to make a choice — either she’s with Beth, or she’s against her.

My book club discussed this book, and we came to one major conclusion about the story: there are no authority figures. Parents are essentially non-existent. Even when they do show up in the story, they are either incompetent or too damaged to pay attention. Would your father casually mention to you that the police want to talk to you, and then not even go with you? Even within the school, the coach and her cheerleaders are able to get away with a lot that I don’t believe would really fly. These girls are drinking, doing drugs, staying out half the night, and destroying their bodies with eating disorders, but it appears that no one really cares – or even notices.

You are getting the entire story from Addy’s point of view, so it’s possible that this lack of authority figures is simply because they don’t register on her radar. It’s possible that her narration is more unreliable than we expect. And I think that’s part of what makes this book so interesting.

I don’t think this is a 5-star read, but I do think it’s a solid 4-stars. It’s very dark, and I think that if I had a teenaged daughter I’d be doing all I could to make sure she wasn’t a cheerleader.