They Wish They Were Us

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I am here to tell you that Gold Coast Prep is, and will always be, a family. We must continue to protect one another,” he says. “We will not let another Gold Coast student be harmed.” Nikki’s elbow presses into my rib cage. and i know I’M coming across a little bitchy spice about this, but just think of me as a big dumb puppy nipping playfully at a book that wasn’t all i’d hoped, but is perfectly fine. having been spoiled by some of YA’s edgier offerings, i found this one a little more Y than i typically dig. the whodunnit is pretty predictable, the fact that so many adults are invested in the game and complicit in the whole system is a little goofy—when a player is shunned, word spreads, and they are scorned not just by current high-schoolers but also grown folks who should have matured out of such pettiness, and surely some college deans would value actual academic merit over cheating cliques, regardless of what they themselves did in high school. One of my favorite things about They Wish They Were Us is the concept of the Players. It’s sort of a secret society, with the exception that it’s not that secret. Everyone wants to be a Player, to be admired by everyone and to be the best at everything, just as well. I really liked how they were introduced and the rules the author set for this little group, too. I thought that was such a great concept overall and well-played into the story. This book was real. There were no explicitly good or bad people. Because real people are never explicitly good or bad except for Hitler. Real people are not beautiful, fake, good, bad, perfect. They’re messy, and unique, and unreliable, and multifaceted. Jill couldn’t be “that girl” because no one is. “That girl” doesn’t exist; she’s not a person. She’s part of a person, and only expecting one thing from them is just shallow. Freshman year Jill’s best friend, the brilliant, dazzling Shaila Arnold, was killed by her boyfriend. After that dark night on the beach, Graham confessed, the case was closed, and Jill tried to move on.

Jessica Goodman's thrilling debut is a modern-day Gossip Girl—but darker.”– Marie Claire, The Best Fiction by Women in 2020 HOLY MOTHER SHIT. I loved this book so much. I read it way too fast and I honestly just cannot believe it. Wow. This book is messy and gorgeous and complex. It’s just so beautiful in a dark, bitchy, haunting way.It is Jill's senior year, which is a time of SAT, ACT, entrance into the college of choice, and grades perfected. Their senior year begins dedicating their year to Shaila, Jill's best friend and a student murdered by her former boyfriend their freshman year. Graham confesses to the crime under the duress of police interrogation without memory of the night and a victim of circumstance. After three years in juvenile detention, he recants the night and declares a retrial under the guidance of a new lawyer. Something I did love were the characters. They were so different and multifaceted, something that isn’t usually covered so well in a clique-y book like this. Everyone assumes that the popular kids are the popular kids and the chess girls are the chess girls and the nerds are the nerds. That’s just them. But they are not and we are not. For a moment nothing else exists outside the Players. We are a force field. And only we know the truth about what we’ve had to do to get here.” This is exactly the type of story-line that I just eat up. There is something endlessly interesting about the wealthy elite and their prep-school prodigies for me. The academic setting provided some structure but, very early on, we witness almost every single character vying to test and ultimately shatter their boundaries there. Much of this book took place after dark, most of it was illegal, and all of it was intriguing.

Quentin - I wasn’t expecting to like him. But then I did. I loved him. He seemed like that one stoic guy character so I didn’t expect that much, but then this book punched me in the face because EMOTIONS. The first day of school always means the same thing: a tribute to Shaila. Today should be the first day of her senior year. Instead, she is, like she has been for the past three years, dead. And we are due for one more reminder.

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I listened to the audiobook of this one, which was a good way to experience it as I love Kristen Sieh as a narrator (She blew me away with An Absolutely Remarkable Thing and A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor) She gave Jill a believable voice in this tale. Now, all of a sudden, Jill decides to grow a conscience for reasons unbeknownst to the reader (really, no explanation at all) and finally sees that what she has been doing all this time is actionable, to say the least, and tries to stop it. However, she still really misses her "friends", who are even worse than she is, and her hard earned popularity.