it's been a busy week so my reading of this was pretty disjointed, and so are my thoughts. first of all, this book was a pretty easy read; it may just be because i've been reading a lot of dense things lately, but i appreciated tis quick pace and generally casual language. this isn't to say that it wasn't a powerful book, though. i've recently been watching a lot of girl-centered horror—jennifer's body, ginger snaps, and the craft—and this book felt like the perfect companion, but updated for the 2020s. i've been waiting for the story of teenage girls trying to find the power they don't have in the world in a way that doesn't demonize them, and at last i've found it. this book feels like a love letter to female friendships. anyone who has felt outcast for being not the right kind of girl can relate to sideways, and i thought her journey to making friends was really well done. the motif of the film ghastly really calls attention to how femininity and sexuality are demonized, at once paralleling and subverting the trope of the "popular girls" that sideways is experiencing in her own life (though if i'm being honest, the existence of this trope + the way high school social life is portrayed felt a bit cliché, but perhaps that's how most young adult novels work). yates' "ambiguity" speech really sets the tone for the book, particularly the way she points out how teenage girls aren't supposed to be powerful and the ways they're demonized for taking back this power (see my reference to jennifer's body above). you can really tell how the author put so much of their own experience as a nonbinary lesbian into this book. in a similar vein, this is the most casually queer book i've ever read, and for that i'm eternally grateful to clarke. sideways feels accurate to my experience as a spooky teenage sapphic, and i'm pretty sure we have the same fashion sense. on that note, the pop culture references in this book work oh so nicely, with siouxsie and the banshees, the vampire lestat, hannibal, and all the allusions to horror movies. it seems that clarke and i have the same taste, especially judging from their favorite authors in the acknowledgments. but i'm getting off topic. my point is, this is the book i wish i'd had earlier in high school when i was still trying to figure out who i was (not that i'm anywhere close to doing that now). on a more negative note, and this may just be due to the fact that i kept reading it in snippets for a few days, the pacing felt a little bit off; it takes us a while to learn much about sideways' personal life, the other scapegracers aren't as fleshed out as i would like them to be, and

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the villains seemed to be pushed to the side until the very end. i did appreciate the bait-and-switch with madeline, even though it was a bit predictable. it really gets at the way power structures work in our society, and how girls are so often pitted against each other as men reap the benefits, even though the women are still in the wrong. also, even though this book emphasized the sapphicness, sideways and madeline's budding relationship feels flat. i felt like i lost track of the plot a few times, but it wasn't enough to make me dislike the book, and i still liked the writing style.

some other things i thought were fun: the fact that sideways has romantic/sexual tension with literally everyone

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(so do we see her finally get a gf in the next book?? i'm lowkey in favor of sideways x jing)

, how jing and daisy (especially daisy) are absolutely feral while yates is a ray of sunshine (also subverts certain stereotypes by having the black character be the least aggressive one), mr scratch, teenage witches in general, all the creepy elements, and the gorgeous cover.