Mean Girls: A Novel

You know what IS fetch? Novelizations of famous movies that hold super true to the film and yet have additions that make it even funnier. Mean Girls: A Novel is an incredibly true-to-film book adaptation of the famous film that’ll make you feel like you’re living in the world of Cady Heron and Regina George the entire time. With alternating points of view so you can be in the mind of Cady, Regina, Janis, Damien, Aaron and even Gretchen and Karen, this is a must-read book for lovers of the movie.

Okay, so if you don’t know the plot of Mean Girls I’m going to break it down for you, but also where have you been the last decade? Cady Heron recently moved to Chicago after living in Africa with her parents who are research zoologists. Now she’s headed to public school for the first time ever, and it’s going to be crazy. With an eye for how everything relates to the animal kingdom, Cady falls face-first into high school, meets outsiders Damien and Janis, and then the Plastics, three girls too perfect to be messed with. But that’s what Cady ends up doing as she falls in with them. Of course, it all centers around a boy because this is high school and realistic but it’s also about finding yourself and friendship and the rules of feminism and the Sahara and all that jazz.

The plot of the book is literally identical to the movie. Your favorite quotes are still included and are just as funny on the page when you can imagine them being said on film. If you liked the movie, you’ll like the book. There were little additions in the book though like “Mrs George’s To-Do List” or deleted emails from Aaron to Cady or journal entries from Gretchen that didn’t change the plot but kind of enriched the characters and helped the book be more than just a prose version of the script. Of course, it’s also nice to be in the mind of the characters and hearing their POV on every issue instead of the movie overview.

Overall, I’m really glad I read this for my Book That Is Also On Stage Popsugar prompt and in close, I will leave you with the song from the Mean Girls musical I cannot stop listening to.

Oh! Also! The girl who plays Janis (who is great BTW) on Broadway also narrated the audiobook for Kill the Boy Band by Goldy Moldavsky if you’re into that. I thought it was an interesting book.