The Clique is a novel by Lisi Harrison, detailing the life of a group of preteen girls, the titular Clique. The novel was spun off into a series of about two dozen books, which are still ongoing.
The main plot of the book is that nerdy, naive Claire Lyons moves from Florida with her family because her father has a job in New York City. Her family moves into the guesthouse of her father's college friend, who has a daughter Claire's age. The daughter, Massie Block, is the most popular girl at her exclusive Westchester all-girls private school. Massie has three friends in her clique: pretty Alicia, hardworking Kirsten and brainy Dylan. The girls don't take kindly to the seemingly tacky interloper, and quickly move to exclude her in a series of mind games and gossip. There are some subplots involving boys and other girls, but the action focuses around the five main characters. Contrary to what the reader might expect, the book doesn't end with everyone learning a valuable lesson about the nature of friendship. The characters do give a grudging acceptance to Claire by the end of the book, but not enough so that the premise of the series is detracted from.
Does this sound like the type of thing you would read?
The book is well written, and given the pedestrian nature of the plot developments (forged instant message conversations), the author manages to get a lot of suspense out of the material. The action and characters are a little exaggerated, but they are fairly realistic. The dialog is actually pretty snappy and witty.
One thing that is a little bit unsettling about the book is some of the maturity of the situations. Especially considering that these are supposed to be 12 and 13 year old girls. When I was reading the book, I assumed they were in their mid-teens until that fact was mentioned. There could be objections to portraying young girls in certain circumstances, but my biggest objection comes to the book trying to have its cake and eat it to, which requires a bit of an explanation of the development of young adult literature.
In the 1970s, there were many books written about adolescents facing "real life" problems, such as familial strife, depression, and developing sexuality. Judy Blume became famous for writing about materials like this, with some controversy, but also with critical acclaim. Young teens, after all, are curious about sex, and not just from the point of prurient interest. But in the 1980s, a new trend started in young adult literature, heralded by Ann Martin's Baby Sitters Club. The Baby Sitters Club were a half-dozen girls with easily described personalities (bossy tomboy, artistic girl, shy girl, etc) who had plots with very little actual character development, not a lot of internal monologue and with very sanitized content. The Baby Sitters Club itself went well over 100 books, and many series were launched with the same idea: a group of friends with easily defined personalities, doing a specific activity.
The question is, which category does The Clique fit in? Is it an honest literary attempt to describe what growing up feels like? Or is it a carefully scripted and controlled presentation of literary stereotypes? Because while a frank discussion of adolescent emotions is acceptable in the first, it is less so in the second. Despite the author's attempts to make it more "adult", she is still curtailed by the formula of presenting character types with little interior development. While the characters are presented in a "sexy" way that is a bit too mature for their supposed ages, it is not in the honest way that Judy Blume would portray them. So the fault of this book is that it presents seemingly mature topics, in a flat and facile way.
It is not a terrible book, it is actually quite well written and interesting. And its depiction of early adolescence is mostly honest. However, it probably goes too far in showing some parts of adolescent life, and not far enough in others.