Then the unthinkable happens to someone in their circles, and it throws the coach and the girls into a tailspin. Addy finds herself front and center in the midst of a game of secrets, lies, and manipulations. She's a puppet trying to find out who's pulling her strings and why. I LOVED that aspect of it. The story unfolds like a whodunit mystery but at the same time a dark series of power struggles and sensual tension that builds with a swelling crest up until the "a-ha" moment comes about. I didn't know what route it would go until the last possible point, and it made sense as far as the lying and manipulations were concerned on behalf of multiple parties.

Indeed, that I ever want to read. The competition is there, of course, but the way all these girls get prepared as if for war, punishing themselves far worse than they punish each other, is just as bad as any of the most intense sports-competition stories I've ever read/watched/or experienced.

Dare me es una novela llena de misterio y trucos psicológicos. Beth, Addy o Colette son personajes llenos de luces y sombras que no sabes por dónde van a salir. Son muy humanos en su forma de hablar y de comportarse. Es, probablemente, una de las novelas que mejor muestra la parte de la envidia y los celos de las personas. Creo que la autora tiene un don para los diálogos o para escribir las interacciones entre personas -y más si son enemigas. En ese sentido, el libro es bastante realista. Megan Abbott's mood and tonal shifts are genuinely remarkable, keeping you on the edge of your seat. I love mood books; I love books that make me feel, even when I don't know what's happening. This book is confusing and screwed-up and flat-out weird, but it's utterly amazing. The ending is almost unclear - I don't think I liked it when I first read this. But in hindsight, I think the ambiguous and odd ending worked perfectly. It's the reason this book still stands tall in my memories, and always will.

Everyone's complex. It's hard not to make a serious connection to Lolita, from the cover of the novel to the layers and layers of personality within Addy and all the versions of Beth and Coach French to which we are treated. Abbott is co-showrunner, writer and executive producer of DARE ME, the TV show adapated from her novel. She was also a staff writer on HBO's THE DEUCE. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books. We're all wanting things we don't understand. Things we can't even name. The yearning so deep, like pinions over our hearts. In conversation, Aldama has a warmth that belies the caricatures. Nowhere is this more evident than in her relationship with La’Darius Marshall, one of the lead cast members, who, in a plot twist this season, leaves the squad, claiming he didn’t receive the support he needed. Aldama, who has said previously that she went “above and beyond” for him, speaks of the pain the rupture brought her. The pair’s tearful reconciliation in the final episode is one of the most emotional moments of the series.First of all, purely accidental injuries are the ones that are the most difficult to deal with. These types of injuries will happen when you least expect them to. Purely accidental injuries could be as simple as somebody doing a jump and then landing on their ankle sideways. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do to prevent this kind of injury as it was a pure accident that they landed that way. Another common accidental injury can be ACL tears in the knee. Sometimes a cheerleader will go to do a round-off for a tumbling pass and have their knee at a slightly wrong angle. Again, there is not much you could have done to prevent this type of injury. Ages fourteen to eighteen, a girl needs something to kill all that time, that endless itchy waiting, every hour, every day for something — anything — to begin.” a really nice touch is that, in this book, the girls aren't the beloved centers of the high-school hierarchy. they are not the popular girls. the rest of the school pretty much sees them as frivolous bitches and don't really interact with them, so their entire social experience is lived within this squad, making their allegiance even tighter, but also intensifying the rivalries. DARE ME is narrated by 16-year-old Adelaine (Addy)- who at the start of the story is best "frenemies" and lieutenant to Beth- the manipulative and emotionally abusive captain of their school's cheerleading squad- until the arrival of an attractive and exciting new coach- Colette French. As Beth starts losing control of Addy and the rest of her team- coach becomes "the enemy" who must be destroyed. It was something. Don't say it wasn't. ....We're all the same under our skin, aren't we? We're all wanting things we don't understand. Things we can't even name. The yearning so deep, like pinions over our hearts.

But the attention hasn’t all been positive. Aldama has been portrayed as a complicated figure: someone to whom the kids can turn for support – which many of them haven’t received elsewhere due to the circumstances of their upbringing – but also someone who rules the squad with an iron fist, encouraging cheerleaders to push through pain, at times to the point of collapse. Concerns were raised about the number of cheerleading-related injuries, including concussions and bruised ribs. Aldama was too tough, critics said, too heartless.I don’t understand this. The girls are supposed to wear their glitter as an exterior and a mask, as said in the beginning. But then apparently their insides are hardened by glitter too? Megan Abbott’s writing continues to be among some of the best stuff I’m reading these days and she does some outstanding work in two areas in this book. First is the way that she puts the reader inside the head of Addy and makes even a bitter and grumpy middle aged man like myself understand and empathize with a teenage cheerleader. Yes the author throws in some typical high school speech {see beyotch etc.} to show the readers that she's down with the lingo, but the majority of the dialogue between the characters was ridiculous. People do not speak like that. "The suns down and the moons pretty," she says, her voice hushed. "It's time to ramble." <--- Just one inane description. There was nothing unique about this except for the overblown drama, which of course happens to Addy and Beth because of course they’re the top two cheerleaders.