THE PACK

At boarding school in Washington state, Sadie discovers she’s part magical animal.

Sadie, 12, assumes she’s been sent to Charm House as a punishment for misbehaving. But the headmistress of her new school explains that Sadie, like all the other students, has an animal light: “a big, bright animal living inside her.” Sadie is really a lion, and her coarse hair, heightened senses, muscular build, and anger-management issues are simply a side effect of her lion light. Sadie and her classmates are taught to fight their instincts, become “domesticated,” and blend in with “typical humans” (a deeply disturbing goal presented neutrally at worst). Though she’s been a weirdo misfit her whole life, Sadie now discovers that, as a lion, she’s the top of the school food chain. The popular mean girls, the Pack, want her to join them—even though they hate Sadie’s snake roommate. Will Sadie’s urge to be popular turn her into a horrible mean girl? Meanwhile, somebody is stalking the girls at the school, knocking them out and physically assaulting them. Some minor plot threads are simply dropped, but the primary mystery resolves quite tidily. All characters with identifiable race seem to be White; their powers, however, are dominated by tropical and subtropical animals native to Asia and Africa, such as lions, tigers, hyenas, and chameleons.

There’s plenty of cliquey mean-girls fantasy novels that hang together better than this one.