THE KARMA CLUB
by Jessica Brody
Debut novelist Brody has created a bright, funny protagonist who is immensely likable. When she is dumped by her boyfriend Mason in a brutally humiliating way, Maddy Kasparkova and her loyal sidekicks, Jade and Angie, decide to swear off romance and take payback into their own hands rather than wait for karma to catch up with their enemies. Armed with a surplus of snappy dialogue and schadenfreude, the Karma Club stages elaborate schemes to get even with Mason and the other boys who have broken their hearts. But their ingenious success in the vengeance game only brings Maddy and her friends more trouble, and when they find themselves backed into a difficult corner, it is Maddy’s secret new Prince Charming who engineers their rescue. Readers will root for Maddy even as her thirst for revenge leads her into ever more cringe-inducing scenarios. The action-packed narrative builds an impressive amount of suspense for what is essentially a comic romance, and readers might learn a thing or two about Buddhist philosophy along the way. (Fiction. 12 & up)