Review: Frat Girl

Frat Girl by Kiley Roache
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

TW for this book: sexism, homophobia, racism, references to rape.

Working at the Stanford Bookstore, seeing this one on the shelves with all copies signed by Roache herself was enough to get my attention. Especially when I found out Roache is a Stanford student and is there any chance I could've greeted her at the store entrance and not even realized? Maybe. If so, it'd be a real honor to meet such a terrific author.

Frat Girl takes the reader to Warren University - a pretty thinly-disguised Stanford - and has us see life there through the eyes of new sociology student Cassie, whose scholarship is all but dependent on a pretty ambitious project. Her plan: join a frat, and not just any frat, but one whose Warren chapter is on the point of dissolution due to a history of shitty sexist frat-bro behavior. There, she'll get to study, firsthand, the bonds of male friendship, and see whether or not they're really as bad as their image suggests.

Well, a lot of them kinda are. There's quite a lot of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. to go around among many of the unenlightened, even unwashed masses that populate this frat.

But they do have their good sides too, as Cassie eventually discovers while infiltrating them.

And there's some who are far more good than the rest. I'm looking at you, Jordan. More on him later.

The real genius of this book is how complex and morally grey it really is. As much as Cassie's supposed to maintain journalist-like neutrality as part of this experiment, her heart frequently gets the better of her, as I'm glad it does. The majority of the bros may be, well, bros - big old jackasses. But then witness the scene where, after Cassie has a bad hookup with a guy in another frat (who insults her horribly when she eventually refuses his advances), her chosen fraternity actually takes it upon themselves to avenge the wrongs done to her, personally. Cassie doesn't much like the sorority girls - she can claim it's part of a character she plays, a role of a girl who gets along better as "one of the guys," but she's not entirely faking it - but eventually gets called out by a black sorority girl for painting them all with the broad "basic white girl" brush.

It's one of those kinds of books where there's no easy answers - which makes sense, given that it straddles the line between YA and NA.

Perhaps the best thing about this book for me was the dynamic between Cassie and Jordan. I shipped them almost immediately and really loved the way their relationship developed - a bumpy ride, to be sure, but not a tragic one either. And on different levels, I related to them both. Cassie's way of looking at social interactions as experiments resonated with me because, as an autistic guy, I often feel like that's the only way I can socialize, by seeing all interactions as experiments. Not to mention Cassie being raised Catholic - though my family's not quite as conservative as hers, they're still just so enough that it leads to a lot of friction between me and them.

And then there's Jordan, who, in my mind, is an even better-looking Andrew Garfield (and as a fellow possessor of them, I gotta say, brown eyes for the win!) He's the kind of guy I would love to grow up to be: charming, sensitive, sweet, not at all uncomfortable with showing his body...but still, just restrained enough that making the first move actually petrifies him. (Though in his case, I think he's far less likely than I am to face the sting of rejection pretty much every time, lol.) And while we're on the subject of Spideys, he's got a little of Tom Holland in his characterization too. The actor, not the character. Because until he meets Cassie, he's not seen a single Star Wars movie. Ever.

(Verily, there is a Stiles GIF for every occasion. Fight me on this.)

I don't know if there's going to be a sequel to this, but with the ending as open as it was, I'd be surprised if there weren't.

Whatever comes next, though, count on me watching Roache's career with great interest.

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