Raina Petree is crushing her senior year, until her boyfriend dumps her, the drama club (basically) dumps her, the college of her dreams slips away, and her arch-nemesis triumphs.
Things aren’t much better for Millie Goodwin. Her father treats her like a servant, and the all-boy Mock Trial team votes her out, even after she spent the last three years helping to build its success.
But then, an advice columnist unexpectedly helps Raina find new purpose in a pair of knitting needles and a politically active local yarn store. This leads to an unlikely meeting in the girls’ bathroom, where Raina inspires Millie to start a rival team. The two join together and recruit four other angry girls to not only take on Mock Trial, but to smash the patriarchy in the process.
How to rate this book?
I love the idea. I love the use of knitting, and Mock Trial, and girls from different walks of life coming together and building each other up. I love that the LGBT characters weren't called out or held up as examples of diversity, they were just there, in the story, having plotlines like everyone else. I love the side characters, especially the knitting group, and I love how adorable Millie and Grace were early on. ("POCKETS!")
Some things I didn't like, some of which may be because I was reading an ARC;
All the males were either horrible or uncaring, with the possible exception of Raine's father, maybe. He wasn't around enough for me to get a feel for him.
Every so often the dialogue lost all its punctuation, which made it feel very stilted and odd. Grace was hit with this more often than the others, but it happened to everyone. That's maybe an editing issue which will be gone in the real version.
A school official blackmailed a student into joining a club, what?! That wasn't ok in Glee and it's not ok here, and Wants To Be A Lawyer, Stands Up For What's Right Millie shouldn't have gone along with it.
The new local judge is bad because...he is bad? The only thing we're told explicitly is that he sets higher bail for women, and it's possible there are other factors in those cases. Some of the characters mutter ominous things about women losing rights under him, but nothing is ever explained and we only see him dodge one question and otherwise be perfectly affable.
Overall, I enjoyed it more than I didn't, but I wish a little more work had gone into it.
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