Graphic & Animation by Paola Vanessa

Genre: YA Thriller

Release Date: May 6, 2025

Thank you to Julie Soto for sending me an ARC and to Macmillan Audio & Libro.fm for the ALC.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Tropes:

Chaotic friend groups
Mystery
Incriminating journal
Golden Boy Nice Guy
Bully romance (kind of?)/ enemeis to lovers
Unreliable narrators
Creepy text messages
**For Fans of:**
Pretty Little Liars
13 Reasons Why
Veronica Mars
TW: mentions of suicide, alcoholism, teen drinking, and domestic abuse. Discussions of statutory rape & bullying. Allusions to controlling parents, stalking, and mental illness. Cops. Petty detectives with a vendetta.

Why is it that YA thrillers seem to be so compelling? I’m going to go with: high school is the most harrowing time for anyone’s life. Terrifying by design, therefore it is the best setting for suspenseful thrillers centered around the absolute barrage of social, emotional, and mental turmoil we go through before our brains have fully developed.

I am Julie Soto’s (self-proclaimed) biggest fan. Forget-me-not still holds the record for my most re-read book (seven times); Not Another Love Song lives in my Top Ten of all time (and promptly has me rewatching every Adam Drivers SNL skit every time); and Rose In Chains has redefined and reawakened my love of fantasy (full review to come). So, it should come as no surprise that I loved The Thrashers, but I was extra surprised that I loved it this much.

Historically, I’m a contemporary romance girlie, with some dip into the unserious/chaotic dark romance category (think Ruinous Love Trilogy or Lights Out). I’ll admit if this wasn’t Julie, I wouldn’t have picked it up as excitedly as I did. But that is why I love when authors don’t keep themselves in a single genre box, but Thrashers left me itching for more YA Thrillers! Open to recs!

The Thrashers follows Jodi Dillon,

the fifth of a friend group unofficially dubbed “The Thrashers” by the school thanks to their charming golden boy “leader”, Zackary Thrasher. Now, *eye* couldn’t stop thinking of Zack Thrasher as Zack Morris a-la *Saved By The Bell*, and I overall don’t immediately trust an attractive blonde man that everyone seems to be in love with, but Zack is overall, semi-harmless. He is truly a golden retriever that loves attention, loves to give attention, and is so charming and personably that he is basically a walking rat trap for parasocial connections. Everyone thinks they’re Zack’s best friend. Everyone is in love with Zack. He’s the nice-version of Regina George, but it is widely known that Zach’s *real* friend circle is small. There’s Jodi Dillon, Julian Hollister, Paige Montgomery, and Lucy Reed. Julian, Paige, and Lucy are all cut from the same cloth as Zach: attractive, rich, aloof. But Jodi is different. She is not rich, she is considered more “average” looking, and she’s essentially been grandfathered into the group since she’s known Zach since the second grade. This group sticks together the way any handful of high school kids do. Cliques will never truly be eradicated from our social systems, but they will be questioned and disputed by the public when bad things happen because of them.

Bad things like: Emily Mills desperately wanting to “become a Thrasher” and instead being “bullied into killing herself.”

Because that is the only time the education system wants to rally around bullying. :D

What follows is a somewhat vindictive criminal investigation; a constant push and pull of secrets and skewed truths; a journal left behind by Emily that was as confusing as it was incriminating; a press field day that made literal 17 year olds have discussions about optics over something as minimal as going to a drive-in movie; and a heavy weight of guilt that led to even heavier paranoia when each of the Thrashers started to get creepy text messages from an unknown number; and Jodi’s personal struggle between staying loyal to her friends and finding her own identity that isn’t solely centered on any feelings she might have for Zack. She lives in a very real and relatable state of being terrified she’d get dropped and no longer having any friends, and what it would mean for her if it did happen. Who would she be? Who is she, without them? She insists that the Thrashers are not a click or an exclusive group, but she spends her entire life desperate to stay inside the circle. Honestly, Jodi is one of my favorite main characters because her paranoia and panic whenever they’d hang out without her—or her very avoidant reaction to Zack hooking up or dating anyone else, her sense that she was always giving more than she got—she is real. These are insecurities that full grown adults still deal with. It made me so protective of her.

This book had me hooked from the get go.

***SPOILERS BELOW***
Julie does not sugar coat or satirize the toxic high school experience, but she does not glorify or fetishize it either (i.e. Euphoria). These are a mess of kids that make stupid mistakes and are so self-centered and privileged it’s impossible to think you could sympathize with them. Paige is a white-woman-tears-weaponizer in the making. Her anxiety was sweating guilt, and I don’t think she’s ever malicious per say, but she’s so concerned about how she’s being perceived. And her panic isn’t rooted in that she thinks she did anything wrong, but that people might think she’s a bad person and therefore don’t like her anymore. I have too much experience with woman with such a desperate need to be *liked* that they work against their own self interest and then want to victimize themselves for it.

On the other hand, Lucy is driven and defensive. And this is highly understandable considering, by description, Lucy is the only Black girl in the group. Even with her status and money, she needs to work twice as hard as everyone else to reach her goals. And something like a criminal charge could hurt more than just her record. Perhaps it is a subtle commentary on Julie’s part, but it isn’t lost on me that the assault charges were brought against Lucy even if the evidence was circumstantial at best. Her lawyers keeping her tight lipped, paranoid, and distrusting of even Jodi is a very clear separation of how the court of legal and public opinion treats white men vs. Black women, even if they’re juveniles. It was Lucy who was adamant about optics, careful about where they went, who they talked to, what they did. She was good with staying off everyone’s radar. While Zack—the only one over 18 that would have been tried is an adult—was still smiling, joking around, and pursuing a 16 year old in the midst of being charged for statutory rape (and lying about sleeping with Emily).

Alas, do you sympathize with the Thrashers, if not just because of Jodi. She is the key ingredient here. She is a bleeding heart—therefore easy to have around, easy to manipulate, easy to scare. Could this be Julie pointing out yet another separation between the way Jodi grew up vs. Julian, Lucy, Paige, and Zack? Was Jodi’s instinct to ease and to care built from her mother’s death? From watching her father struggle with money and having to take care of herself when he was gone? Was her tendency to keep herself around but invisible a product of her dealing with her father’s bouts of alcohol induced rage? I do want to point out that Jodi is of Latine heritage. She is shapely (if not mid-size). And I think these are very deliberate character details that really highlight the separation between Jodi and her friends. Even Emily, who plainly said she was prettier and had more money than Jodi. Even if she found Jodi interesting, in the position she wanted to be in, Emily saw herself enough “above” Jodi’s socio-economic standing to consider replacing her.

Jodi—be it because of her upbringing or not—is innately a good person. So selfless that she doesn’t realize how magnetic she herself is in that goodness. She finds validation in being needed, because she’s not all that convinced people want her. And people like Zack and Paige function best when they are being praised, doted on, adored. They take advantage of good people like Jodi and become addicted to their attention so long as it serves them. And they only become interested and reach out when they’re at risk of losing that devotion. (i.e. Zack’s sudden interest in Jodi only once he realized she had feelings for Julian)

Now, I’m not a “bully romance” person. But I do love an enemies to lovers, which is what I would consider the romantic subplot of Julian. He is, objectively, mean. And he knows it. He is an asshole. And that’s why I like him so much. He is self aware. He’s not nice. Like, even to Jodi. I know there will be discussion over whether or not their progression throughout the book was because he was trying to get on her good side so she wouldn’t testify against him or if he actually liked her. But considering he is seventeen years old, and doesn’t really seem like the kind of person to pursue something he doesn’t really want, I’m going to say that his feelings towards Jodi were true. He was the most protective of her, the one who showed up when Zack was too preoccupied with himself. If anything, I see his initial cruelty towards Jodi as a way to protect her. No, he didn’t think she “belonged” in this group, but I think he thought she was just too good for them, and didn’t understand why she’d waste her time chasing after people that didn’t value her the way she should be valued. Something he certainly didn’t think he deserved.

That might just be my “I can fix him” mentality. But I’m team Julian, I don’t care. Zack makes me viscerally angry. I don’t hate him, but I just need someone to smack him around and humble him down bad. At least Julian expected and accepted the consequences of his actions, even if it meant losing Jodi.

Overall, this book snuck up on me. Even after I finished it, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. To wondering what will happen next, especially after that epilogue. Julie Soto can do anything, truly. But The Thrashers is truly a feat of unpacking the nuance of high school social hierarchy, peer pressure, teen mental health, the effects of being chronically online, bullying, and how easy it is to gather information and use it to twist and weaponize the truth.