Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood

I have always hated the expression "revenge is a dish best served cold," as I think it sounds just plain asinine. In short, it means give yourself time to cool off before exacting revenge. Helen does just that. Helen and Lauren, friends since infancy (due to having last names that start with W, they were placed beside each other in the newborn ward as they were a day apart) have a rather rocky friendship. Lauren, the cliche popular blonde, calls all the shots and Helen, eager for a friend goes along with her. She dares not step out of Lauren's good graces as that is infinitely more palatable than losing the one friend she thinks she has. Lauren is a manipulative, scheming classic bitchy character. She humiliates Helen two weeks before their 8th grade graduation and Helen is left to endure the wrath and ostracism of her peers. Lauren was the one who caused the problem, but set Helen up to take the blame. Her rationale for this was that she had to claw her way up the social ladder and Helen just happened to be social collateral damage. Once she secured a perch on the top rung of the Social Ladder, then she could do Helen the favor of reinstating their friendship. Crushed and humiliated, Helen retreats from school as much as possible. Luckily, her father has a job offer that moves the family from Michigan to New York State. During those three years on the East Coast, Helen plots her revenge, little knowing that she just might serve Miss Lauren a banquet full of vengeance. During her senior year, Helen's father accepts a grant to pursue his research in Maine. The area has no school within driving distance, so Helen reluctantly moves back to Michigan to live with her grandmother and ride out senior year. And what a senior year it is! She is immediately paired with a shy, bookish girl named Brenda Bauer, who turns out to be a real friend with a solid moral core. At 17, Helen has arrived. She is now slender; had her hair done and goes by her middle name and maternal grandmother's surname. Now Claire Dantes, the former school pariah is now a social force to be reckoned with! She worms her way into Lauren's circle of friends, who as it turns out are not so much her friends but satellites who revolve around her so as to maintain some social status. Helen/Claire is brilliant; she exacts revenge on Lauren in ways most people would only fantasize about. Resourceful and clever, she pulls off stunts that really tarnish Lauren's reputation and give the classic bitch a taste of her own foul medicine. I love it! Brenda remains the voice of reason. It is Brenda who helps Helen/Claire take on a new perspective, as does a kind boy named Christopher who shares Helen/Claire's passion for classic movies. A delightful read that all ages will enjoy. If these characters were grown women on the work force, it would be considered Advanced Chick Lit. As it is, it is delightfully wicked chick lit and I would recommend this gem to anybody!

Lauren Wood is going places and she doesn't care how she gets there or who gets hurt in the process, just so long as she gets what she wants. Which is how she came to be at odds with her best friend Helen. Lauren saw an opportunity to move up in high school's circles and it didn't bother her a bit that her lie to do so took down Helen. At least the timing was good, since Helen's family had to move away. But three years later Helen has to return to the "scene of the crime" and dreaded it until she realizes she has an opportunity to exact revenge on Lauren because she believes she's changed enough in three years that Lauren won't recognize her. That and the fact that she registers in school under a different name. We've all known someone like Lauren who will use and manipulate people to get what they want so it's easy to relate to and sympathize with Helen. And author Eileen Cook almost makes revenge look fun - all you need is a definite goal, right? :o) I read this book in just a few hours time because I didn't want to put it down. The only nit I had with it is I figured if Lauren and Helen were so close that she would've picked up on the fact that Claire and Helen were the same person but that thought didn't even occur to me until about page 179 or so and by that point I was all in and didn't really care if she should've known. It was a light, fun read and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for a feel good, funny book.

Spoilers. Eileen Cook starts off Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood making us sympathetic to Helen, our heroine, when Lauren, in her quest to be popular, blames Helen for a fiasco that gets all the seniors in trouble. It's so bad that when her parents tell her they're moving away, Helen is thrilled. Three years later, she's back, but this time with a new look and new name: Claire. Oh, and a serious, detailed 4-point plan for revenge on her former childhood friend, who's now the school's queen bee. It's here where I started to lose sympathy for Claire. At first, I wanted her to get her revenge, but when I saw just how ruthless she was, it creeped me out a bit (perhaps it's intended to). Claire herself realizes that her act isn't going to be so easy when she has to be two-faced to her new friend Brenda and not be as open with her crush, Christopher. She gets so good at getting revenge (I won't spoil it but some of the things she does are not only illegal but just totally over the top) that she forgets there's a life beyond that. Though I knew that at some point, Claire's identity is going to come out (and, um, come up, in a particularly gross scene I won't spoil), Cook kept me in suspense as I wondered just how far Claire would go. What she winds up doing is totally above and beyond, and it's questionable whether Lauren deserves it (she's certainly not the most likeable character). This is a fun, entertaining book proving that revenge may not be sweet, but it does take a smart, calculating girl to exact it.

Eileen Cook does a great job of really looking at what it does to a person to exact revenge (even richly deserved revenge) while never getting preachy and always making you laugh. A great book.

Helen Worthington has been wronged. Very wronged. So wronged that after three years away, living on the other side of the country, she's still looking for revenge on her former best friend. But even when Helen's vengeful plan is going well and Lauren's life starts swirling the drain, Helen knows there's still something's missing. But what? And why, after three years of reliving her humiliation at Lauren's hand, isn't Helen feeling great about getting back at her former friend? GETTING REVENG ON LAUREN WOOD is a quick, fun read with real, three dimensional characters. I'm not going to lie, this book is a juicy read. Full of scandal, evil frenemy retaliation, boyfriend stealing and high school vigilante justice. But it's not just guilty pleasure fun; Helen learns a little something along the way with the help of her savvy but hip grandmother, a new friend and the school's hot bad boy. And who doesn't love a hot guy to help teach a girl a few things? GETTING REVENGE ON LAUREN WOOD is a great read and the perfect follow up to Eileen Cook's What Would Emma Do?