Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave chapter 9 “Even Hell Has its Factions”

Sorry for skipping this one. My brain hasn’t been right lately. My original intention was to do chapters nine and ten together because chapter ten was so short. But I guess I only followed through with half that plan. And not in the right order.

Anyway, you know the party we just read about in chapter ten? Chapter nine starts before that, when Grace is getting ready. Macy has loaned Grace a dress to wear, but it’s a little more daring than Grace is used to.

“The dress is gorgeous,” I agree. Because it is. And it probably looks perfectly respectable on Macy’s tall, willowy figure. My big boobs make things a little trickier, though.

Interesting…heroines aimed toward female audiences usually don’t get big boobs. We associate big boobs with sluts, and the heroine can never be slutty. It’s more common for big boobs to be a quality the evil slutty slut rival has. And the weird thing is, no evil slutty slut rival has appeared in the story yet.

Oh my gosh. Is there not going to be one?

Ugh, that would be my dream.

“Look, maybe you should wear the jeans you originally planned.” Macy crosses to my bed and holds them up. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

It’s tempting, so tempting. But… “Are any of the other girls going to be in jeans?”

“Who cares what the other girls are wearing?”

There’s another subversion of expectations. Usually, the heroine’s friend pressures her into wearing something sexy so she has an excuse to wear the sexy thing without being responsible for making a sex-positive (or even sex-neutral) choice. And the pressure usually comes from something like, “you don’t want to be the only one there dressed like a nerd, do you?” or whatever. Instead, Macy is like, hey, don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable.

I mean, she’s still pressuring Grace into going to a party that’s going to make her uncomfortable.

But overall, Macy is still fantastic and she tells Grace she looks beautiful.

And then the book decides, hey, at least one genre convention can’t hurt, right?

I roll my eyes at her a second time, because “beautiful” is a bit more than a stretch—with my curly auburn hair, plain brown eyes, and the random groupings of freckles on my nose and cheeks, I’m pretty much the opposite of beautiful.

Excuse me, bitch? You did not just describe yourself as ugly and use two of my physical characteristics in your list of three things that make you ugly.

I’m going to fight a fictional child.

But as I started to weave my way through the crystal beads outside our door, Macy says, “Here, let me hold those for you. Don’t want them to shock you. Sorry I didn’t think about it yesterday.”

“Shock me? What do you mean?”

Macy explains that the beads shock everyone and she’s surprised Grace can’t feel it. But Grace can grab a fistful of them and nothing happens. Grace just figures her shoes are preventing it.

She closes the door, then brushes her hands through the beads several times, like she’s trying to get shocked. Which, I know, makes absolutely no sense, but that’s definitely what it looks like.

Finally, a clue about magic that isn’t so obvious it makes Grace look catastrophically unobservant. Of course, you’d think Macy means the beaded curtain will shock you with static electricity. And of course, we’ll probably later find out it’s magic and that Grace is somehow magic, too, and that’s why she doesn’t get shocked. But for now, it makes total sense for Grace to not think anything of it. She just finds it a little kooky that her cousin would keep a decoration that shocks everybody with static electricity.

In my premature chapter ten recap, I complained about Grace being mopey about people intentionally ignoring her because her goal was ultimately to not be noticed at all, by anyone. Except without chapter nine, that part isn’t like…in there?

I know Macy says this is supposed to be a welcome party, but I’m kind of hoping the tea just goes on as usual. My goal is to be as invisible as possible this year, and a party where I’m the main attraction kind of messes with that plan. Or, you know, totally obliterates it.

So, she goes into this party hoping everyone ignores her, and then in chapter ten she’s like, wait, everybody is ignoring me, that’s unacceptable.

But Uncle Finn is apparently not in on Grace’s “please ignore me” plan because Macy warns Grace that he’ll probably do a little speech.

Of course he is. I mean, why wouldn’t he? After all, who doesn’t think painting a target on the new girl’s back is a good idea? FML.

Right? Like, as headmaster of a boarding school for high schoolers, you’d think he would have met a teenager before. But Macy keeps saying not to worry, this is all going to be fine, and they go into the party.

At least until I realize my worst nightmares have come true and they’re all looking at me. And none of them seem impressed.

But that’s a good thing, right? If they were impressed, you’d be interesting enough that they wouldn’t ignore you.

You know how I keep saying that Grace should have figured out there’s magic going on here long, long before now, and that there are apparently no paranormal romance YAs in the world that exists in this paranormal YA? Well, this is what the room where the tea party is happening looks like:

I don’t know where to look first, so I look everywhere, taking in the crimson and black velvet baroque wallpaper, the three-tiered iron chandeliers with black crystals dripping from each elaborately carved arm, the fancy red chairs and black cloth-covered tables that take up the back half of the large room.

Like, this sounds so extra it’s like Mariah went goth. And it gets worse.

Every five feet or so, there are dark wall sconces with what look like actual lit candles in them. I step closer to check them out and find myself completely charmed by the fact that each wall sconce is carved into the shape of a different dragon. One with its wings spread wide in front of a fancy Celtic cross, another curled up around the top of a castle, a third obviously in mid-flight. In all the dragons, the candle flame is lined up to flicker in their wide-open mouths, and as I get even closer, I realize that yes, the flame is real.

Totes norms. But Grace does find it suspicious that her uncle is cleared by the fire marshal to have open flame in a building full of students.

The ceiling is even painted red and black, and there’s a huge buffet table full of food that none of the students are eating. They’re all standing around in various cliques that look like:

Energy—and disdain—permeate the air around the students near the window as they look me over. There are about thirty-five of them, and they’re all huddled into one large group, like a team going over plays right before they take the field. The guys are all wearing jeans and the girls are in tiny little dresses, both of which show off strong, powerful bodies with some major muscle definition.

and:

Curiosity and a healthy dose of contempt cover the faces of my new classmates at the back of the room. Dressed mostly in long, flowing dresses or button-up shirts in luxurious patterns and fabrics that fit the room perfectly, they’re a lot more delicate-looking than the group near the windows, and even before Macy waves excitedly at them, I know that this is her group.

and:

On our way, we pass another large clump of students, and I swear I can feel heat radiating from them in waves. Every single person in this group is tall—even the girls are close to six feet—and the fact that they’re watching me with varying degrees of scorn and suspicion makes walking past them distinctly uncomfortable. Basketball, anyone?

Okay, I’m guessing we’re talking about werewolves, witches, and dragons here. I would guess demons instead of dragons but there’s all that dragon stuff on the walls. Which can only be explained away if Uncle Finn enters wearing one of those three-wolves-howling-at-the-moon monochrome tie-dye t-shirts.

The “basketball, anyone,” comment is a little suspicious when the next paragraph is like, oh, hey, this is Flint’s group. You know, Flint? The Black guy? Yeah, he’s in the group of the super-tall kids who should play basketball.

Flint makes goofy faces at Grace and Macy is like, you have no idea how long it took me to get him to notice me and he’s into you? But she also tacks on that since they’re cousins and “destined to be best friends,” there are no hard feelings.

“Pretty sure Flint and I are destined to be friends, too,” I tell her as I hustle to keep up with her ridiculously long stride. “I don’t think guys cross their eyes like that at girls they’re interested in.”

“Yeah, well, you never know. Dra—” She breaks off on a violent cough, like she’s just choked on her own saliva or something.

Okay, so yeah, he’s a dragon.

“In case you were wondering.” She shoots me an assessing look. “Before. I was going to say drastic. Like, sometimes guys go to drastic measures to get girls they like to notice them. That’s what I was going to say. Drastic.”

Great recovery, Macy. Not that it matters because again, no paranormal romance YA exists in the world of this book, so there’s no reason for Grace to assume that the kids in this mountainside castle who literally generate heat in this room full of dragon paraphernalia could be dragons just because Macy says half the word and blows the save.

That said, Grace figures it’s just because Macy has a crush on Flint and is awkward in his proximity. Okay, fair.

And there’s another clique…

Dressed entirely in monochromatic shades of black or white—designer shirts, dresses, trousers, shoes, jewelry—they all but drip money…along with a careless kind of power that it’s impossible to miss. Though they are as obvious a clique as any of the others in the room, there’s a kind of formality among them that the other groups lack, a sense that they have one another’s backs against anyone else in the room but the alliance ends there.

How is Grace this perceptive and yet hasn’t figured out this is a magic school with magic shit going on? It’s a literal castle on the side of a treacherous mountain, decorated like a haunted house and full of Twilight extras.

And it’s a good thing Twilight doesn’t exist in this book, either, because dripping money and power sounds a lot like the Cullens.

Grace is grateful that at least this group doesn’t look at her at all because she’s overwhelmed by the number of students around her. She notes that no one from the individual groups mingles with the other groups at all, so I assume that’s why Flint doesn’t notice Macy. They’re not in the same monster faction.

No, everyone here at Katmere Academy seems to be staying firmly in their own lanes. And judging by the looks on their faces, it’s not fear keeping them there. It’s disdain for everyone else in the room.

So, is this prejudice that they learned at home? If so, why are they being sent to a boarding school with all these different types of monsters they disdain?

Only pride keeps me from fleeing as we get close to her friends. Well, that and the fact that acting like prey right now seems like a particularly bad idea. I mean, if I don’t want to spend the rest of my senior year dodging every mean girl in the place.

“I can’t wait for you to meet my friends,” Macy tells me as we finally reach the group in the back. Up close, they’re even more spectacular, different gemstones gleaming in their hair and against their skin. Earrings, pendants, hair clips, plus eyebrow, lip, and nose rings, all bedecked with colorful stones.

Witches! I was right!

I’m pleasantly surprised to find that there are different kinds of magical beings at this school. I really thought Katmere Academy was going to be only vampires.

“Grace!” a beautiful redhead with a giant amethyst pendant interrupts. “Welcome to Katmere! We’ve heard soooo much about you.” Her voice is enthusiastic to the point of being mocking, but I’m not sure who she’s making fun of—Macy or me. At least until I look into her eyes, which are viciously cold—and focused entirely on me.

Big surprise.

A mean girl approaches. My dream of a book without a horrible girl character who’s mean to the main girl character is dashed once more.

Macy’s group has another Black student in it, and her name is Lily and not like, Atlanta or Baltimore so maybe I jumped the gun with the suspicion over Flint’s name.

One of the other girls in the group says:

“Don’t pay any attention to Simone,” she says, all but hissing the redhead’s name. “She’s just bitter because all the guys are looking at you. She doesn’t like the competition.”

Damnit, Crave. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you!

“Yeah, that’s totally why I’m bitter. I’m worried about the competition. It has nothing to do with the fact that Foster brought a—”

And Macy interrupts her and pulls Grace away. This tells us that Grace is the only human there, and some people aren’t going to like her for that.

On their way to get a drink (which you know is gonna be Dr Pepper, if you read the out-of-order chapter), Grace notices that in the middle of all this elegant bullshit, there are those orange insulated dispensers like you see on the sidelines at sports games or such. Macy tells her that they’re water, in case the pipes freeze but come on. You know they’re blood. They’re blood, everybody.  They probably usually put the blood in fancy containers or those things from Orange Julius where you can see the juice constantly on the move, but they’re trying to hide the monster thing from Grace.

Look, if that’s the case, it better be because they’re trying not to freak her out on top of all her trauma. Like, it better be that they’re just planning to ease her into it, not lie about it indefinitely.

The author really wanted a Dr Pepper while writing chapters nine and ten, I have to bring that up again because there’s a whole paragraph dedicated to how it’s Grace’s favorite drink and Macy went out of her way to make sure it was at the party.

Grace meets Macy’s boyfriend, Cam, who has pasty hands, and his friend James, who can’t believe that Grace has never seen snow. Macy is like, how is that hard to believe if she’s from California.

“I guess not.” He shrugs and sends me a grin that I can tell is meant to be charming but grossly misses the mark. I’ve always hated guys who look at girls like they’re food meant to be gobbled up.

I don’t like them either. Anyway, if you read the chapters out of order this is the James she was avoiding. But this is another cool little wink wink, nudge nudge at the reader; when we find out that Jaxon is a vampire (because Jaxon is a fucking vampire, come on), he’s going to be looking at her like she’s food to be gobbled up, only literally.

Grace and Cam start seriously making out in the middle of all these people, which immediately knocks Macy down on my personal likeability chart. People casually groping/making out with/sitting in each other’s laps like nobody is around and there’s no way they could possibly be making anyone uncomfortable by non-consensually involving them in their foreplay was the worst part of high school and my early twenties. It just grosses me out.

In this case, it puts Grace in a really awful position:

Before I can answer, he’s got his face buried in Macy’s neck and she’s giggling, her hands threading their way through his sleek brown hair as she burrows into him.

Which is pretty much my cue to leave, as things suddenly get really awkward.

Especially since James continues to stare at me like he’s waiting to see if I’m going to plop myself down on his lap—which, for the record, I most definitely am not.

Yeah, when you’re hanging out with a couple who’s getting freaky and there’s another person in the mix who is presumed to be attracted to your gender, it’s ten times more awful to witness and be a part of.

There are two more references to Dr Pepper, since it’s an excuse for Grace to extricate herself from the situation.

Cam must do something super sexy to her, because Macy’s laugh changes, gets lower, about the same time I lose all her attention.

Dick move, Macy. You’re the only person Grace really knows and you’re gonna be like, well, my boyfriend’s here so, bye.

The chapter ends with “two very large, very warm hands” on Grace’s shoulders, so now you’re all caught up to chapter ten.

I’m not sure why the chapter breaks up here. They’re both super short, so it wouldn’t have been bonkers if they’d been left together. Someone putting their hands on her shoulders isn’t the strongest hook. But anyway, we’re back on track, so long as I don’t jump ahead to chapter twelve for the next one.