The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (Part 2)

Part 1 can be found here – reviewed by Joanna (read this first).

Joanna was spot on when she said that this book is a manifesto on feminism and activism. Frankie is known to her family as Bunny (short for Bunny Rabbit) because she’s sweet and innocent and in need of protection. Or so they think. Frankie is tired of being underestimated, tired of being swept aside, tired of being inconsequential. And she’s far too smart not to get her own way.

This book was so well written – it almost reads like a book someone researched on a historical figure, more humorous of course, but it presents Frankie as a person of consequence whose history has been recorded for posterity. That alone just tickled me.

From the inside flap:

“Frankie Landau-Banks:
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an
answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all
male secret society.
Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of
places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows
Mathew is lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.”

That about sums it up. What got to me too was that in many ways Frankie is also just an ordinary teenage girl. She pines after the good-looking older boy, snags him, and then tries to fit his idea of what he’d like his girlfriend to be. But where Frankie differs is that this fuels her anger and she acts out in unexpected ways. There is, of course, another boy of interest, but the book doesn’t play on any of the usual clichés. Well done, E. Lockhart, well done.

One more thing – I just have to say how furious Mathew and his group made me. They were so charming in some respects and such total turds in others. I wanted to smack them repeatedly. It was great!

Other Reviews: Bookshelves of Doom, Little Willow, 3 Evil Cousins, and about a million more. Everyone seems to have loved this book.