Because You Love To Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy

Gr 9 Up—This anthology about villains capitalizes on the fascination with the subject but fails to explore the reasoning behind it. The stories in this unwieldy collection, edited by YouTube sensation Ameriie, are inspired by BookTuber-provided prompts. Some prompts are vague, such as "A young Moriarty" for Susan Dennard's "Shirley and Jim," which presents a modern (and female) Holmes meeting Moriarty for the first time at boarding school. Others are bizarrely specific, such as Renée Ahdieh's sci-fi "The Blood of Imuriv," which resulted from the prompt "The grandson of an evil, matriarchal dictator who tried to rule over the universe wants to follow in her footsteps and accidentally loses his temper, killing his sibling in a game of chess." Thus, the entries vary in quality, making this cross-genre volume less than cohesive. BookTuber contributions range from personality quizzes and literary criticism about the tales to personal essays related to the prompts. Standouts include Soman Chainani's "Gwen and Art and Lance," which is written entirely in texts and emails among the titular characters as Gwen tries to manipulate Art into taking her to prom amid unwanted overtures from Lance, and "Death Knell" by Victoria Schwab, which offers a nuanced meditation on what it means to be Death. There are no redeeming qualities for most of the villains here, and for the most part, there's a lot of superficiality. One notable exception is Cindy Pon's poignant "Beautiful Venom" (prompt: "Medusa, go!"), which makes the Greek myth relevant to modern readers as they watch Mei Feng become Mei Du in Pon's tragic retelling with a Chinese setting.