Five of the best novels that subvert clichés

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At B & N Reads Somers tagged five books that "cleverly explore long-running tropes, mining them to create a new reading experience," including:

Cliché: Mean Girls. Book: Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll

The “mean girl” trope has been a staple for a long time, even after it was punctured in the titular Lindsay Lohan film. It’s become a bit of lazy shorthand: rich, plastic pretty girls are horrible and cruel. Few books explore what makes Mean Girls so mean in the first place, and even fewer bother to wonder what happens to Mean Girls after high school. Luckiest Girl Alive does both, and performs a remarkable trick by presenting a protagonist who is mean and difficult to like at first, then slowly humanizes her as her twisty and surprising story (trust us, you will think you’ve hit the twist—and then there is another twist) unfolds.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue