So I just picked up the fourth book (FOURTH) in a row where the head cheerleader is all things evil. We're not talking evil in a kicky vampire kind of way, we're talking full on Cordelia with no redeeming features. Everything hard about the smart, endearing, creative and woefully unappreciated protagonist's life is exacerbated by the evil machinations of the head cheerleader. She is out to get us and that is just the way it is.

(Okay, one of the books does not have an official head cheerleader but the rich popular catty girl who is the source of all things scary in this high school was a carbon copy of the head cheerleader in the other three books - in fact I kept waiting for the passage where she had her pom poms. I can only assume that it was an oversight that she was not given the title she was clearly tailor made for.)

I don't know when this became the latest trend in YA lit (or is this considered the return of a classic trend?) but it is really quite disappointing to see authors fall back on such a cliche. Yes, yes, I know that Buffy needed Cordelia but do recall that Buffy was a former head cheerleader and Cordelia's continued cattiness after she was the cheerleader who becomes friend to the geek squad (okay the vampire slaying geek squad but still) was both funny and surprising. In other words, Whedon played with the cliche; he reinvented it and made it something new. And Rory had Paris - who was evil but not a cheerleader (perish the thought) and also went through her own transformation. (Hell Paris had Francie and Francie wasn't even a cheerleader. The only cheerleader to ever grace the screen in that show was Lane which totally turned the cliche on its head and was quite wonderful.

In other words, you can have your teen drama without bashing cheerleaders.

For the record, I was not a cheerleader. But our head cheerleader in high school was....nice. She's still nice. The cheerleaders were the same kind of mix you found elsewhere in my school - sweet, kind, smart, pretty, and yes - some of them were not the nicest girls. But we also had that in choir and band and, well, we had that everywhere. That's what you get in high school - a bunch of complicated kids who rarely fit anyone's idea of a stereotype. Unless of course you are in the world of YA literature, then you're just knee deep in cheerleaders and not a one has a single redeeming feature.

On the one hand this might seem funny - squads of mean girl cheerleaders are taking over the literary halls of high schools everywhere! - except for a reviewer (or at least this reviewer) it gets mighty darn hard to read through a book that sounds way too much like the one that came before - and the one before that - and the one before that. Each of the four books I've read recently had different sorts of teen problems: I don't fit in, my parents are fighting, my parents are sick/dead/distant/lying and, oh yeah, I don't fit in - but those problems aren't exactly earth shatteringly new. A lot of teen fiction skews in the same direction anyway so when you add something like a transparent villain who basically looks the same in every single book (blonde is popular mean girl hair color - go figure) then it gets very hard for a reader to see beyond the similarities. You lose any connection to the book because you're ticking off how it is like the book that came before it. And then you put it down and pick up the next one hoping it will be something different. And there she is again - that devilish cheerleader and the only sound you can hear is your own head banging on the table in abject despair.

Oh poor cheerleaders! Why must you be so very bad?

I can't review these books because I can't see past this cliche. It's entirely possible that teenage girls (who are the audience) will love them, but I am afraid that I am just too old to set aside the use, of what I think, is a cardboard (dare I say cartoonish) villain. It is at moments like this that I wonder if adults can even review teen fiction. In this case I can't and I'm sorry for the authors involved but this was just too much.