After re-reading and enjoying We Were Liars at the start of the month, I moved onto another of E. Lockhart's novels, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. I bought this book ages ago purely because I loved Liars so much and was interested to see more from this author. I really enjoyed her writing and I was curious to see if this book might become another favorite. Accordingly, I started off my reading with high expectations.
The plot follows the eponymous Frankie Landau-Banks, a teenager just about to start her tenth grade year at an exclusive private boarding school. She's always been a pretty normal, unassuming girl, but a sudden growth spurt over the summer has transformed her into a beautiful young woman. Her new body gets her lots of attention, and when she sparks the interest of a popular senior named Matthew Livingston, she gets drawn into the popular crowd.
Before long, Frankie and Matthew start to date. Frankie enjoys her new friends and status, but she soon notices that Matthew disappears off with his guy friends an awful lot. One night, she follows him and discovers his secret. He is co-leader of the famous Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds, a boys-only secret society famous for pulling all kinds of legendary pranks on campus. After sneaking around a bit and observing the Order's attempts at tomfoolery, Frankie realizes that they lack vision. She knows that she could do much better if she were in control, but as a girl, she's not allowed to participate in the fun.
Frustrated, she continues to watch the boys and begins to quietly investigate the history of the Order. When an opportunity presents itself over the winter holidays, she manages to anonymously assert control over the group. Just as she suspected, she's a natural at the job. Under her directions, the boys pull off increasingly epic pranks and become school heroes. Frankie feels amazing and powerful, but as her involvement has to remain a secret, she starts to grow more and more resentful. She longs to reveal herself and show Matthew and the Order what she is capable of, but she knows that's not likely to go well. She continues operating from the shadows until a tough situation arises when one of the boys is caught while helping with a prank. Frankie must decide whether to let him take the fall for the Order, or reveal that she's been the mastermind all along.
When I first started reading this novel, I wasn't too sure about it. It starts off as pretty typical contemporary teen fiction. Not bad, just unexceptional. Once Frankie started taking control of the Order though, things started to get surprisingly interesting. This is one of those books that secretly has a lot of interesting points about gender politics. I was reminded a little bit of Stray by Elissa Sussman, another novel that has a surprising amount to say about feminism. I enjoyed watching Frankie's growth throughout the story from a typical, quiet girl to a bold leader that does what she wants and stands up for herself. Her secret participation in the Order helps her to really come into her own, and her frustration at the inequality between men and women on her campus was interesting to explore. Coming into her own necessitates a certain amount of sacrifice. She comes to find that some of her male classmates don't appreciate a woman who doesn't bend - who doesn't mold herself around their desires. She has to give up being liked by everyone to be herself, and I liked that she was ultimately okay with that.
This novel is definitely different to We Were Liars, my favorite Lockhart novel. It didn't have the same darkness or drama to it and I did not become emotionally invested in it. It was, however, fun and unexpectedly smart. While I didn't love the entire novel, I came to have quite a bit of respect for it by the end of the story. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to my students, as I think young readers will be entertained by the elaborate pranks and benefit from reading about a strong female character learning to embrace her talents. This was a nice read with a great message. I didn't like it quite as much as We Were Liars, but it has something important to say and I'm quite happy to have experienced it.
Total Books Read in 2020: 65
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