How Girls Are Made
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Sex Education meets Euphoria in this dark contemporary novel that tackles perfectionism, emotional abuse, and the dark side of social media.
Fallon is a fixer. From planning prom to organizing her college applications, she’s got it all figured out…except for when her younger sister comes to her with very basic questions about sex. Shocked that she knows so little—and her fellow classmates even less—Fallon decides some practical education is in order. And Fallon isn’t above practicing a little civil disobedience by creating a secret underground off-campus group.
Shelby is a fighter. Having her nose broken is nothing new in her semiprofessional career…but this time it’s her boyfriend who threw the punch. Now her phone is blowing up with texts from a new guy who tells her she’s perfect, she’s special, she’s everything he’s ever wanted…except for a few small details. Shelby’s happy to adjust for him, because isn’t that what a healthy relationship is about?
Jobie is a failure. She doesn’t have enough followers and her posts never go viral, no matter how hard she crushes challenges and applies exactly the right filter. But a friendly DM from a good girl just like her points her in the direction of a whole new audience of admirers. Guys who just want to talk. Guys who give her the attention she’s always wanted.
The lives of all three girls intersect in Fallon’s secret class, rumors of which have parents up in arms. Fallon needs to keep herself anonymous, Shelby needs to keep her new boyfriend happy, and Jobie needs to keep her followers…who keep asking for more. Each girl finds herself trapped in an inescapable situation—that will leave one of them dead.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McGinnis (Under This Red Rock) delivers a blistering portrayal of girlhood via multiple teens grappling with sexism, male manipulation, intimate partner violence, and more in this tautly written, emotionally devastating novel set in small-town Ohio. After the boyfriend of Shelby, a social media celebrity, punches Shelby in the face, she's left with a broken nose and a viral scandal, and starts a new relationship marked by love-bombing and emotional control. Simultaneously, when high-achieving Fallon discovers that her younger sister, a middle schooler, is alarmingly uninformed about sex due to her school's abstinence-only curriculum, she endeavors to shake up the system. Meanwhile, insecure teen Jobie struggles to manage pressure surrounding social media beauty standards, comparing herself to girls like Shelby or her own mother, whom Jobie believes men fawn over. Banding together, Shelby, Fallon, and Jobie launch Self Help and Fitness Training, an underground sex-ed group disguised as a self-defense club. But even as they help others, they each grapple with personal conflicts. Via the white-cued teens' alternating first-person perspectives, McGinnis captures, with searing intensity, the psychological toll of growing up in a society that fails to equip girls with the knowledge, safety, or language they need to survive grooming, gaslighting, and systemic neglect. More than a cautionary tale, this is a call to awareness about prevalent patriarchal systems. Ages 16–up.
