Lissa’s tired of the rivalry. She’s tired of the pranks. And she’s tired of being interrupted when she and boyfriend Randy are having fun in the back of his car. At Hamilton High, there’s been a ten year rivalry between the football team and the soccer team. No one’s quite clear why the fight began, but Lissa’s determined to make it end. She wants her boyfriend back, and she wants to quit having to feel like she’s been an accomplice to the acts he and his team members commit against the soccer team. Lissa knows just how to make it happen: a freeze out.

Lissa and fellow girlfriends of the teams gather together and develop a plan wherein none of them will allow their boyfriends the opportunity for making out or for sex. By denying the boys of their pleasure, the girls reason that they will be driven by their primal urges to quit the rivalry and instead focus on what really matters to them.

If this sounds at all familiar, that’s because Keplinger’s sophomore novel is thinly based on the Aristophanes play Lysistrata. Despite that, readers who are unfamiliar with that particular play will still understand the plotline, as it’s one that’s played out time and time again in films and other books. It’s a classic battle of the sexes, but what Keplinger does in her take on the story is amped it up into an all out story about sex and sexuality.

Where Keplinger was brutally honest in her portrayal of teen sex and romance in The DUFF, I felt like it was overdone in Shut Out. The sex here is amped up, and it’s the spotlight of the entire story. Lissa, despite being a well-developed character through her desire to be a strong and independent female, has her personality overshadowed by sex. We meet her in the midst of almost having sex with Randy. Then we see her gain her power through withholding sex. Then we see that really, the entire thread about sex was perhaps a bit of a charade in the greater context of the story. I can’t say much more without ruining the plot, but in short, I felt like we lose out on getting to know Lissa’s character because of how rampant sex is in her storyline.

I made it pretty clear that sex is the theme of the book, and while I felt like it’s fairly authentic to teens, there were times it felt like it went more into the realm of feeling like a book set on a college campus than a book set on a high school campus. By that, I mean that the discussions of sex were much more frank and open than I can believe high schoolers having; it felt too mature and experienced, which still seems like a strange way to differentiate sex between high school and college. Although sex happens in high school, what this book seems to do is make it seem like everyone is participating in it. Anyone who isn’t is somehow branded as weird and those virgins are made to look like they’re criminal. Like it’s something to hide and be shameful of. I’m not sure if that message is ever quite resolved at the end, but it’s one that rubbed me the wrong way a bit.

Moreover, I really didn’t like the mixed message that came with sexuality. Here, sex was power. Withholding it gave these girls a sense of empowerment and a reason to make their boyfriends change. What it boils down to for me is that these girls all equated sex with being feminist, and that’s something that leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Again, the real potential for the girls to be powerful and dynamic and make a statement about themselves and their feelings about this childish rivalry relies solely on sex, rather than on being clever and cunning with their minds.

While I am fine with sex in my teen books – because it IS a reality – I think this one pushed the limits a bit. Readers who were uncomfortable with The DUFF will certainly find this read more uncomfortable, so beware this one is frank and blunt.

Another challenge I had with this book is the plan that Lissa and her fellow athlete girlfriends have for getting their boys to stop the rivalry. Actually, it’s not the plan itself that was problematic, but it was the execution of the plan. Never did the girls consider how to unify against the boys or make the boys understand what was going on. They were all on their own. Again, because I don’t want to ruin the big reveal with Lissa, I can’t explore this further, but having a plan that required the girls to all be individual agents of a group change effort wasn’t really a smart idea. Moreover, giving the boys some sort of heads up would have potentially made it more effective. As much as it bothered me, I do have to say that it felt very authentically teen. The planning and ideas were there, but the lack of world experience didn’t give the teens the keen insight to seeing the greater picture of how things would or could really play out.

Despite the issues I had with the book, there is something to be said about Keplinger’s ability to write dialog and to write stories with teen appeal. I felt like the moments when characters interacted were honest, and the conversations they had felt like the kinds of things I hear when I’m around teenagers at work or in the high school. The kids aren’t set up to be brainiacs nor are they deeply philosophical. They’re real. The story is fast paced, and even though I felt the characterization drowned in the midst of sex, the characters ARE developed within the pacing. The threads aren’t too loose and the story doesn’t fall apart because of it. Keplinger’s writing reminds me a lot of Simone Elkeles, and I think that the topic at hand fits with that comparison, as well.

Shut Out is a book to hand off to your reluctant readers and those who like a story that’s edgy and sexually-charged. Though there will certainly be readers turned off by the topic at hand and the frankness with which it’s handled, there is a lot of appeal to Keplinger’s story. Fans of The DUFF will certainly want to read this, as will fans of Simone Elkeles. I think this book would make for a really interesting book club choice, too, as there are a lot of fleshy bits worth talking about – think feminism, sexuality, and even the idea of rivalry.

Review copy received from publisher at ALA. Shut Out is available now.