The Pack

April 15, 2021
Grades 5-8 From the author of the popular Clique books comes an imaginative new series set within the halls of an unusual middle school: the all-girls Center for Human-Animal Reform and Manners, aka Charm House. Though she looks like an average girl, Sadie has never felt she fits in; maybe it's her unruly hair, muscled physique, or nocturnal sleep patterns. After a few too many bizarre incidents get Sadie expelled from regular school, Miss Flora--headmistress of Charm House--takes the girl on, promising to help teach Sadie how to develop and control her animal side. Not long after her arrival, a mysterious creature begins exacting vengeance on a self-absorbed clique known as the Pack, prompting Sadie to try to find out what is going on and what secrets Charm House is hiding. An evil science institute, literal cattiness, new friendships, and explorations of identity are all woven through this fun, fast-paced read, guaranteed to fly off the shelf. Thankfully, an aggressive publishing schedule will see two more installments due out in the next year.

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April 19, 2021
Harrison (the Clique series) dives into girls’ boarding school dynamics in this playfully paranormal series starter. After animalistic impulses and anger issues get her into trouble at middle school, straw-blond Sadie Samson is transferred to Charm House, a girls’ boarding school in Timor Lake, Wash. There, she discovers that Charm, the “Center for Human Animal Reform and Manners,” secretly shelters and trains girls like her, who possess animal spirits known as lights. Learning that she has a rare lion light, which distinguishes her as a potential leader among species including hyenas, giraffes, and monkeys, Sadie falls in with the Pack, a clique of popular girls led by tiger light Lindsey. When a series of mysterious attacks implicate her snake light roommate, Sadie must solve the mystery at the heart of Charm House to prove her leadership mettle and save her friends. Scant world-building raises more questions than the brief, fast-paced story has room to detail, and character descriptions are often limited to backward-looking phrases (“exotically gorgeous,” “narrow-waisted”); Sadie, nevertheless, makes for a sympathetic, engaging protagonist throughout. Ages 10–up. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment.

May 1, 2021
At boarding school in Washington state, Sadie discovers she's part magical animal. Sadie, 12, assumes she's been sent to Charm House as a punishment for misbehaving. But the headmistress of her new school explains that Sadie, like all the other students, has an animal light: "a big, bright animal living inside her." Sadie is really a lion, and her coarse hair, heightened senses, muscular build, and anger-management issues are simply a side effect of her lion light. Sadie and her classmates are taught to fight their instincts, become "domesticated," and blend in with "typical humans" (a deeply disturbing goal presented neutrally at worst). Though she's been a weirdo misfit her whole life, Sadie now discovers that, as a lion, she's the top of the school food chain. The popular mean girls, the Pack, want her to join them--even though they hate Sadie's snake roommate. Will Sadie's urge to be popular turn her into a horrible mean girl? Meanwhile, somebody is stalking the girls at the school, knocking them out and physically assaulting them. Some minor plot threads are simply dropped, but the primary mystery resolves quite tidily. All characters with identifiable race seem to be White; their powers, however, are dominated by tropical and subtropical animals native to Asia and Africa, such as lions, tigers, hyenas, and chameleons. There's plenty of cliquey mean-girls fantasy novels that hang together better than this one. (Fantasy. 10-12)

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