Like Lana

Lana is one of the “fabbies” (one of the cool kids) in her high-school, with their sole focus on being popular, looking and acting cool, texting with their cool boyfriends, dressing up in fancy clothes, drinking, partying, taking drugs and other acts of self-absorption. Her life goes out of control when her boyfriend shares a nude picture of her with his friends, an image that gets passed around the school. Lana becomes socially shunned and relentlessly bullied, losing all her friends, her status at the school, her boyfriend and any kind of respect. Her parents and teachers offer little support, and she befriends Demit, a misfit, who helps her navigate and make sense of her new life on the fringes. That is until her former friends begin to turn up dead and Lana scrambles to learn the truth of their deaths.

The book captures the voice of young people well, and some of the dialogue between characters even takes place in the form of text messages, an important form of dialogue in the lives of young people. The perspective, however, remains focused on the world and the lives of the “fabbies”, the elite popular kids who rule the school, and apart from Demit, with little mention of anyone outside this circle.

The novel’s characters lack diversity and remain shallow, one-dimensional stereotypes, focused on their role as: the tragic heroine and her fall from grace, the cool, self-centred abusive boyfriend, or the popular girl that would stop at nothing to get what she wants. Lana’s alcoholic mother and busy/distracted father show her little concern. Even the jock-centred football coach, instead of investigating what was going on, offers her nothing but a sneer as she leaves the locker-room after almost being raped by two of his players. These realities do exist in our society, but the novel paints an extreme world where violence and misogynistic thinking are fully accepted. It thus becomes difficult for the reader to connect with or develop empathy for the characters, or invest themselves in the plot.

Like Lana takes on many dark themes and issues including: sexting, cyberbullying, rape, abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, bullying, parental neglect, and family dysfunction, but remains at the surface instead of fully delving into the issues. The plot is somewhat directional in its focus on the book’s murder mystery elements. While trying to portray realism, the book falters in failing to capture any kind of universality that could build empathy for Lana or the other characters, or allow the reader to connect to the world portrayed in the novel.