Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin is a unique story, bright and bold. It is a tale of a brutal assault (not depicted), and the diabolical depths of revenge one girl takes against those who wronged her, and will never wrong another. 

The night after Elle and her friends Mads, Summer, and Jenny crash a St Andrews Prep party, and the unimaginable happens, they gather to plot revenge. Elle (now Jade) transfers to St Andrews, and quickly wraps one of the golden boys around her little finger, crafting him into a weapon to be wielded as she sees fit. With the help of her friends, working in the shadows to unravel the boys’ fragile sanity, Jade rips the group apart from the inside out. 

I quite enjoyed Capin’s writing style. It fit the story perfectly. I loved the hyphenated adjectives like dazzle-smiled, murder-bright, and dizzy-high. All of it together call to mind the disjointed snapshots of memory trauma, or the slow erosion of sanity, causes. Jade and her friends are typical ‘mean girls’, the type of characters I would usually not care for at all, but they are pitted against people far worse. Duncan and the boys of the lacrosse team, who act as if they can get away with anything. As if drugging and raping teenage girls is a sport. In this way, I found myself cheering Jade and her coven on. And what a revenge it was! Designed to cause maximum terror. 

I think my biggest qualm is the cover. If I were to consider this book solely by cover some, I’d’ve passed it over for sure. It feels too light-hearted for the story it contains. There’s stuff that isn’t at all believable for the ‘real-world’, but it was easy to suspend disbelief instead of going “that wouldn’t happen”.

***Many thanks to the Netgalley & St. Martin’s for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.