KILL THE LAX BRO

A group of unlikely friends exacts their revenge on an entitled lacrosse bro.

Troy Richards is a jerk. A senior on Hancock High’s lacrosse team, he seems untouchable: He’s handsome, manages to evade accountability for his numerous wrongdoings, and has been admitted to Harvard. But Troy isn’t universally loved by his classmates. Troy’s ex-best-friend and former lacrosse bro Andrew Garcia, ambitious perfectionist Sassi DeLuca, bad girl with a heart of gold Tatum Stein, and quiet freshman Naomi King all have reasons to resent him. The teens devise a series of vengeful pranks on Troy, but when he ends up dead at a senior night lock-in, any one of them may be the culprit. Balogh’s debut, set in the late 1990s, has an alluring plot with a quasi-locked-room concept but leans heavily on nostalgia and eventually collapses under its overly ambitious bloat. The narration rotates among the perspectives of Troy, Jennifer, Andrew, Sassi, Tatum, and Naomi, whose voices are difficult to distinguish. These shifting points of view are set against a jumpy timeline, further adding to the confusion, and a scattering of red herrings frustratingly leaves readers with more questions than answers. The examination of toxic masculinity and accountability is intriguing, but the characterization leans heavily on stereotypes and harmful tropes and the story reaches a disappointing conclusion. Andrew is cued Latine and white, Naomi reads Black, and other main characters present white.

Messy and unsatisfying.