Five friends, five birthdays. Across one year, five birthday wishes bring revenge and justice to a small Ontarian town in this companion novel to Exit, Pursued by a Bear (2016). As five teen girls observe and identify wrongdoings in their hometown, they take action in hopes of changing the cultural landscape they can no longer stand. With its rotating cast of narrators, this tackles issues such as racism, xenophobia, classism, and sexism through a lens of vengeance. A guide to characters prior to the narrative sets up an "everybody knows everybody" small-town vibe, raising the stakes for the characters as they work on their anonymous payback and depict their ride-or-die friendships in the process. Short and to the point, the story packs a punch with direct prose and strong-willed characters. Add this issue-driven contemporary novel to teen collections for readers who enjoy revenge plots and books like Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian's Burn for Burn (2012).

What begins as a passing frustration turns into a full-fledged vigilante mission when five best friends make birthday wishes to challenge the narrow-minded viewpoints of their small Canadian town in this feminist thriller. High school seniors Maddie Carter, Jen Dalrymple, Jenny Hoernig, Louise Jantzi, and Mags Sharpe are all “good girls”; they’re active in sports and clubs, get good grades, and never step out of line. But when Maddie wishes for justice after a classmate is made a pariah for getting an abortion, the friends enact increasingly dangerous vendettas against the white alpha males who rule the school and surrounding community. Via bracingly direct scenarios depicted in the five leads’ alternating POVs, Johnston (Aetherbound) addresses themes such as class dynamics, gender identity, religious intolerance, sexual harassment, and xenophobia. While extraneous details weaken the plot’s momentum and the protagonists’ chosen retributions occasionally miss the mark, the girls’ evolving friendship as graduation looms is affecting, and each character’s determination to better their community is impactful: “I wanted to make things better, not for ‘the good old days’—because they hadn’t been—but for the days to come.” Most characters are white coded; several are queer. Ages 14–up. (Apr.)

Gr 9 Up— Five best friends in a small Canadian farming town plan elaborate heists and acts of subterfuge to vindicate wrongdoings that happen within their community. When a girl who gets an abortion is treated poorly by her neighbors and the local Catholic church, suddenly the grass around the church's "memorial to the unborn" won't grow. When one of the girls' siblings is rejected from the volleyball team for being nonbinary, one day the team's uniforms just fall apart. These capers and others are pulled off by the main characters through careful planning and blatant use of their status as "good girls" to get done what they believe others cannot. This novel has a promising premise, but only skims the surface of the social justice issues it attempts to tackle. There is also surprisingly little tension as the girls' plots are planned and executed, and every escapade ties up very neatly. At the heart of the story is the quintet of main characters—their personal growth and their relationships with one another, which in moments is reminiscent of films like Now and Then , but often feels quickly sketched out between incidents. Readers may desire more to feel connected to the characters and the outcomes of their choices. The novel begins an interesting conversation on using white privilege and community status to exact revenge on behalf of suppressed individuals (who didn't ask for it) but doesn't explore it too deeply. VERDICT A slice-of-life thriller with a compelling concept but underwhelming execution.— Joanna Harris