Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 06/01/2025 Mean Girls gets a queer, BIPOC, dark academia update in this engrossing thriller about a school where girls are taught to survive and thrive, by whatever means necessary. Senior year at the Gardner-Bahnsen School for Girls should have three things: friends, Ivy-League applications, and the annual Tierney Cup. When ex–best friends Max and Nora, along with newcomer Teddy, compete in the yearly tournament, tensions rise, expectations shatter, and boundaries evaporate. All three narrators read as Black and lesbian, and privilege seeps out of the woodwork at Gardner due to the mostly upper-crust student body; the students’ language, though, happily disregards any traditional notion of politeness. The plot gallops along, sometimes too quickly, zigging when the reader knows it will zag. The romantic entanglements are necessarily complicated; the characters are teenagers, after all. The somewhat one-dimensional secondary characters aside, the main three come across beautifully through deep introspective looks at their lives, emotions, and possible futures. With an ending that makes the reader question any belief in basic goodness, The Tournament will leave a lasting impression. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.