War and Speech
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- ¥1,500
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- ¥1,500
Publisher Description
Mean Girls meets the debate team in this fish-out-of-water story about a teen girl determined to sabotage the elitist speech team at her new school.
Not everyone can be a winner... and Sydney Williams knows this better than anyone. After her white-collar-criminal dad is sent to prison, Sydney fails almost all of her classes and moves into a dingy apartment with her mom, who can barely support them with her minimum-wage job at the mall. A new school promises a fresh start. Except Eaganville isn't exactly like other high schools. It's ruled with an iron fist by a speech team that embodies the most extreme winner-takes-all philosophy. Sydney is befriended by a group of fellow misfits, each of whom has been personally victimized by the speech team. It turns out Sydney is the perfect plant to take down the speech team from within. With the help of her co-conspirators, Sydney throws herself into making Nationals in speech, where she will be poised to topple the corrupt regime. But what happens when Sydney realizes she actually has a shot at... winning? Sydney lost everything because of her dad's obsession with being on top. Winning at speech might just be her ticket out of a life of loserdom. Can she really walk away from that?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
High schooler Sydney Williams is a new student at Eaganville, a nunnery-housed arts school in Minnesota, where she's starting over following her father's imprisonment and her parents' divorce. After a verbal altercation in her very first class, Sydney's new friends considered losers for their interests in activities such as basketball, drama, and improv explain the school's hierarchy, which is ruled by varsity speech and debate. Made up of mean-spirited, highly competitive kids and coached by a former motivational speaker who once impacted Sydney's father, the team wins and they don't let anyone forget it. Humiliated by several on the squad, Sydney and her friends devise a plan to take them down: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Zolidis (The Seven Torments of Amy and Craig) writes with humor and heart, giving readers a peek into Sydney's growth as she learns from mistakes. What makes this stand out from books with similar tropes is Zolidis's funny, sarcastic repartee and flair for creating multifaceted characters with depth, especially the bad guys. Ages 14 up.
