In this incisive, darkly humorous YA graphic novel, a new kid joins her high school's most elite clique only to discover that her friends are werewolves.
Gay and Asian American Becca has always felt like an outsider, so she doesn't expect to make friends when she transfers junior year to a new high school. She is amazed when the most popular girls in school, Marley, Arianna and Mandy, welcome her into their clique. But Becca's new friends are hiding a grisly secret: every full moon, the girls transform into werewolves and "hurt boys. Only boys. The WORST ones." Eager to feel that "for once, I belonged," Becca lets her friends transform her into a werewolf. However, as more boys go missing, the police grow suspicious. Infighting threatens to tear the pack apart, and Becca questions how far she will go for the approval of her new friends, even as she finds herself falling for one of them.
Squad is an unabashedly feminist story, exploring female hunger and desire--for status, belonging and power--while criticizing rape culture. Graphic novel illustrator Lisa Sterle's art is both stylish and sinister, effortlessly shifting between panels of humorous character interactions and gruesome gore. Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea) clearly conveys the intensity of female friendships and their potential for toxicity: nothing matters more to Becca than her friends, even if it means going to increasingly violent extremes. Teen fans of snark, horror and Elana K. Arnold's Red Hood should adore this bloodthirsty graphic novel. --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer