The Clique, by Lisi Harrison is the first book in ‘The Clique’ series. It is targeted at young adults, as I guess they would be able to relate to the story. But I’ll get onto my feelings about that later on.
You can purchase it at any local bookstore for cover price, however I would recommend buying it at WalMart where it will run you close to $8 which is much cheaper than anywhere else.
Anyways:
Massie Block is the most popular girl in 7th grade at Octavian Country Day School. (OCD-for short). Her life is grand. Her parents are filthy rich, she is beautiful, and so are all of her friends. She has no real worries; everything she could ever want is handed to her. She basically is the perfect mold for a spoiled rotten rich girl.
Oh but good things always come to an end for the poor little rich girl. Don’t they always?
Massie’s father has just announced that Jay Lyons, his old school buddy is coming to live with them, and that they will be staying in their guest house until they can find a home of their own, and get on their feet. Along with Jay Lyons comes his wife Judi, his daughter Claire, and son Todd.
When the Lyon’s first arrive, immediately Massie takes a dislike towards Claire. In Massies eyes Claire and her family are nothing but leeches; bottom feeders, and an extremely poor scrubs.
She figures ignoring Claire and paying her no mind will be the best solution. However when Massie discovers that Claire will be riding with her to school everyday she’s not too happy; not happy at all.
Claire on the other hand is ecstatic, thinking that she is going to be the newest member of Massie’s crew of friends, which consists of a girl named Dylan, a chick called Kristen, and a babe called Alicia. Claire just wants to fit in, and she feels that this group would be the perfect opportunity; seeing how she lives in Massies home, there is no reason for them not to be friends.
But with any small group of snotty girls, things go extremely South for Claire, when Massie does nothing but make her life miserable, and she has her evil little minions doing most of the work.
The girls pretend to be her friend one minute and Claire is happy, then in the next few chapters they are back to picking her to pieces, and Claire is crying. It’s on again, off again. Which makes it quite annoying, and almost like a drag on the story. I’m your friend, I’m not your friend, I’m your friend today, but not tomorrow.
Day in and day out Massie is finding new ways to make Claire feel like an outcast; so much that Claire even finds herself a new friend in a girl named Layne. When Massie discovers that Layne is Chris Abbley’s (the boy she has the hots for) little sister, Massie of course tries to befriend her. Claire is now on her own, friendless, yet again when Layne quickly moves into Massies group of friends.
When a huge disgraceful act is done by the girls at Massie’s poolside Claire decides to go for revenge, (however in my opinion her little plot of revenge was so pathetic and lame, that there is no way in hell that she’d get away with these stupid stunts in the real world) which in the long run gained her the friendship of Dylan, Alicia, and Kristen.
We all know the outcome of a loser trying to get revenge though; it gets thrown back into their faces ten fold. This is what happens when you mess with the ‘mean girls’.
Anyways, I won’t spoil the ending, but I am now going to go into detail about how I felt about ‘The Clique’.
BLAH!!!!
For one, I couldn’t understand why Claire over and over again tried to win the approval of Massie, and her wicked little sidekicks.
I mean usually when a person is being bullied, they ignore and avoid the bully as much as possible. Yet in this book Claire finds herself trying again and again to be accepted by her bullies. That confuses me. Nowhere in the book did it ever mention Claire having a low self esteem, (not only that she is pretty vocal when it comes to making friends with Layne) yet it is clear in the book that she must have a low self esteem to want to be friends with nasty girls like this.
One more issue I had with ‘The Clique’ was the obvious spelling errors and grammar errors that ran throughout the book. The author seriously needs to hire a new editor. I mean I have seen small spelling errors in books before. But those books were usually 3lb novels with one minor error.
This book was a pretty quick read, and was basically a wobbly slim novel. (If that were what you would call it.) For me to spot a spelling error on every other chapter is huge. When you spot errors as you are reading, you get annoyed, and maybe chuckle after, but when the errors come up consistently throughout the book, you doubt the author and the editor/publishing company.
Not to mention the fact that the last book I read in Lisi Harrison’s ‘Clique’ series also had a few errors as well. So this is not the only book in the series filled with minor errors.
I’m also still scratching my head trying to figure out how a teenager could relate to this story.
Yes I’m aware of the troubles one goes through while trying to find acceptance as a young teen aged girl, but I mean who the heck here can raise there hand and say ‘yes, I always tried to make the mean girls like me? Not me, that’s for sure. As a teen I had self-esteem issues, but I certainly knew to stay the heck away from those who liked taunting me.
How does this teach any lesson to teens? How do teens relate to this? I’m so confused by the whole thing really.
Maybe nowadays it’s cool to be tormented by people who really hate you, yet act like your friend. I don’t know what teen on earth would be okay with that, but God bless those who may be in such a situation.
Another huge issue with ‘The Clique’ is basically the fact that the villain was never taught any real valuable lessons of what happens to a person when they keep on bullying someone.
Massie no matter how mean she is, is still mentioned throughout the book as if she is the star of the show, and no matter how mean and nasty she is to others she never suffers any real dramatic consequences. It’s almost as if the author favors this particular mean girl, and never allows anything too serious to happen to her for her wicked ways.
In my opinion ‘The Clique’ was basically like reading a few chapter in a 7th grade mean girls diary, and that was it.
I would of liked to see a lesson learned. Only it didn’t really have one.
Recommended:
Sorry, ‘The Clique’ is a skip in my opinion.
