What an ode to girlhood, unpalatability, selfishness, freedom, indecency, and taking up all the space in a room. The girls and women in these pages were by and large deeply unlikeable, hugely flawed, and certainly impressive in their sheer audacity. But damn if I didn't fall in love with them all and find them complex and compelling and even sympathetic. The relationships between them were also absolutely delicious with everyone locked in a twisted mirrored dance, I could honestly spend days talking about them (and sure took pages of notes about them) but for the sake of the review I'll just leave character commentary at this: I'm obsessed.

As far as the more technical aspects, the structure of the book was so fun with quick chapters (with titles!) and snappy simple cadence that just made it extraordinarily readable. Also so much rich imagery, metaphors, and even a dip or two into something approaching magical realism that I adored. The narrative voice I also thought struck such a good balance of scathing critique and deadpan sarcastic comedy. There's a ton of social commentary through this book hitting at class and gender with absolutely zero attempt at subtlety, and that really worked for me. I think in general my most appreciated aspect of this book was how well it layered satire and sincerity, where there was so much terribly and laughably wrong and yet so much keenly right, and all of it on the nose. Several featured characters obviously took inspiration from historical figures, but unfortunately I'm not very well versed in them so I'm sure a lot went over my head, and I do wish there was an authors note or something to get to dig into that more.

Finally, the plot itself was really solid too, for each thing I saw coming there were probably 3 others that had my jaw physically dropping. Especially the last 50 or so pages were exhilarating with tension that had me on the edge of my seat and twists and reveals that were both shocking and yet made complete sense once they happened, and which offered a totally new lens to the story. We end in a very different place we start, but I think I'm okay with that. In general everything was always looping back onto itself - reflections were a huge theme - so I feel like if I reread the book I'd get to find so many more parallels and passages in conversation with each other than I did on this first pass.

Just a really rich and ambitious book; I thoroughly enjoyed it and will almost certainly be returning for another read. "I support women's rights and wrongs" may have feasibly been the mantra and guiding light for this book, and I'd very much recommend it to all others who appreciate that sentiment.