Parents' Guide to

Foul Is Fair

By Mary Cosola, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Dark, violent revenge tale is a teen update of "Macbeth."

Book Hannah Capin Contemporary Fiction 2020
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What you will—and won't—find in this book.

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What's the Story?

In FOUL IS FAIR, Elle Khanjara goes out for a big night with her friends on her 16th birthday. They attend an exclusive party thrown by kids from St. Andrew's Prep, the fanciest private school in town. She's given a drugged drink and is raped by four boys, all of whom are lacrosse stars and rule the halls of St. Andrew's. Her memories are sketchy, but she pieces together most of what happened that night, including who mixed and gave her the drink, who attacked her, and who the rapists' friends are who knew what was going on but didn't stop it. She and her friends devise a plan to kill or destroy everyone involved. She changes her appearance, enrolls at St. Andrew's, and starts going by her middle name, Jade. Over the course of two weeks, she manipulates people into committing murders and upends the social hierarchy at the school. One by one, the guilty teens pay the price for their crimes, but suspicion and paranoia threaten to derail her plan.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
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Kids say (2):

This over-the-top revenge tale starts out intense and juicy but gets bogged down by its melodramatic style. The loosely Macbeth-based action and plot of Foul Is Fair requires readers to suspend their disbelief throughout the story, but author Hannah Capin provides an insightful look at the ways privileged men get away with terrible acts -- in this case, rape -- and how they're abetted by associates and institutions who look the other way in order to preserve their own status and standing. After she is assaulted, Jade becomes single-minded in her quest for violent, murderous revenge.

Over the course of the book, it becomes clear that Jade and her friends are sociopaths, which makes it hard to relate to them, even though their rage and drive for vengeance are well founded. In fact, pretty much all the characters are horrible people and one-dimensional. It's not necessary for books to have likable characters, but few of these characters and their actions are relatable in any way, making it hard to engage with the story. And for a book that takes place over two weeks and jumps right into the action, the pace is plodding at times. This is due mostly to the repetitive nature of the writing, especially the dialogue, which is overly dramatic and unnatural to the point of being tedious. Capin occasionally provides a realistic glimpse of the deep trauma Jade's dealing with, but those few scenes only serve to highlight how over-the-top the rest of the story is.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about speaking up when we see something terrible happen. In Foul Is Fair, Jade feels that the kids who knew the St. Andrew's boys were drugging and assaulting girls but did nothing to stop it are as guilty as the rapists. How do you feel about this?

  • How do you feel about stories set in high schools with extreme social cliques, such as cruel popular boys and vicious mean girls? Is the over-the-top aspect fun for you? Does it bear any likeness to real life in high school? Why do you think these kinds of stories are so popular?

  • Foul Is Fair is a modern retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Do you like modern versions of old stories? Do the updates make the concepts more interesting or understandable to you? If most teens don't know the play Macbeth, why update it for a young adult book?

Book Details

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