Take Three Girls

By Cath Crowley, Simmone Howell and Fiona Wood

Three authors. Three appealing and relatable characters. One smart YA novel about a trio of unlikely friends who team up to take down the school cyberbully. 
 
“Mean stuff spreads so fast. One click. Post. Send. Share. Online bullying = sometimes suicides, so all the private schools have strategies for dealing with it. At St Hilda’s, it’s Wellness classes. We greeted the idea with genuine enthusiasm. Why not? Everyone loves the chance to slack off.”
 
Popular Ady seems cool and confident at school, but at home her family is falling apart. Brainiac Kate wants to pursue her dreams of playing music, even if it jeopardizes her academic scholarship. And swim champ Clem finds herself disenchanted with the sport . . . and falling for a very wrong boy. When these three very different girls are forced to team up in a wellness class, they’re not too pleased. But over time, they bond—and when they’re all targeted by PSST, a website that dishes out malicious gossip and lies, they decide to take a stand, uncover the culprits, and fight back. But can they really fix a broken system? With each girl’s story told by a different author, as well as intriguing questionnaires from the wellness class included throughout, this empowering novel explores today’s most relevant topics— from cyberbullying and fat shaming to drug abuse and financial stress.   
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sterling Teen
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781454938286

Reviews for Take Three Girls

[herenya_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a story about taking risks, making changes, discovering what is important, and dealing with the pressures of others’ expectations and with malicious cyber gossip. Clem (sporty), Kate (nerdy) and Ady (popular) are thrown together by their private school’s Year 10 “Wellness” classClem is struggling to get back into swimming after an injury; she’s self-conscious about her body and distracted by a boy. Kate is supposed to be focusing on the scholarship exam so she can stay at St Hilda’s, but wants to pursue her love of experimental cello music. Ady is trying to conceal her family’s problems from her friends, and realising that her passion for clothes goes beyond a typical interest in fashion.I enjoyed reading this so much. It’s funny and feminist and sharply insightful about teenage experiences -- school, friendships, romance, family, cyber bullying. I loved the friendship which develops between the girls and how they support each other. I appreciated the references to the things in their lives, like the musicians Kate admires, the poetry quoted in their Wellness class, Ady’s older sister’s opinions, and the details about living in Melbourne.I liked the ending… but I keep wondering if it could have been written in a way so that it hit its final notes with more oomph. I don’t know if it was just the effect of having three endings for each of the girls, or of there being just so much going on in the story that some things were resolved a bit too tidily and others were left a bit too unresolved. Maybe it’s just a me-thing? Anyway, I still really liked this. “Okay, girls, I’m going to ask you to sort yourselves into groups of three according to thumb length,” Malik says as though it’s a fun thing to do. [...] It reminds me of a kindergarten icebreaker, but at sixteen we’re frozen deeper than he knows.