A pedestrian novel: Outcaste high school girl meets highly desirable new kid. They fall in love. Her mysterious secret threatens to destroy them, until she faces catharsis by first confessing her dark secret (mandatory rejection at this point), then proving that things really do go bump in the night, and finally by saving everyone’s lives, vindicating herself and rekindling the romance.

If that is a mouthful, then let me summarise even more briefly by comparing it to Stephen King’s novel Carrie, but replacing mind-bending powers with mere clairaudience, and bullying ostracism with…well, more bullying and ostracism. Unlike Carrie, Mary rallies a sense of self-preservation and is the of-course-pretty Goth girl that everyone at school loves to hate.

Once more, pedestrian. I need to stop reading literary fast-food; it causes nothing but indigestion. No more slumming it in the $0.00-.99 range of ebooks, K.L.

For once, I would like to read a story about an outcaste school girl (or boy) who is:

a. Genuinely ugly

b. Has really bad acne from all the white face paint she cakes on, and,

c. Is not the target of unrealistic levels of bullying.

I’m not saying that such things don’t happen – but let’s try and find a protagonist who doesn’t force us to like them by virtue of being at the bottom of the schoolyard pecking order. It’s a boring, over-utilised trope that is indicative of a lazy imagination. An ultimately uninspiring read.

(To segue back to Carrie; that book is a brilliant depiction of a character who you start out repulsed by. King doesn’t want you to like her, and you don’t. Not until she starts learning to respect and assert herself, and in the end, you wish for her to get a little slice of happiness. The chance of which is masterfully ripped apart by the forces of her own mind, fractured by one practical joke too many.)

K.L gives Scary Mary 1 out of 5 well-used black makeup pencils.