Ally Ryan and her mother have just returned to Orchard Hill, looking to start a new life in the place they once called home.  Orchard Hill is the enclave of the rich and privileged, mansions and brand new cars, designer clothes and personal basketball courts. All Ally can think of are the things that she no longer has, the home someone else is now living in, the friends who will no longer speak to her, the lost perks of being one of the in crowd. Once the girl that everyone wanted to be friends with, she’s now the girl whose father is blamed for a banking deal gone wrong, the father that disappeared without a word to Ally or her mother. Now, instead of worrying about the next big party, or what car she might get for her birthday, Ally’s life is about starting over and figuring out which of those she once considered her best friends will betray her next.

Across the lake, the window wall on the ballroom of the country club glowed with yellow light. A thousand memories of late-night parties with my parents, of sack races by the lake on summer Club Day, of swimming races in the pool with my friends, suddenly flooded my mind. My heart was full of the things that I’d had to give up. Things that, clearly, I was never going to have again.

Ally’s learning process endears her to the reader. Her struggles with the high school clique she left behind make her instantly sympathetic, and her sense of humour makes her eminently readable. We also get a chance to hear from the Bedroom Boy, Jake Graydon, current possessor of Ally’s old bedroom and new basketball court. His chapters alternate with Ally’s, and their voices, along with the smattering of school-wide gossip that begins each chapter, allow Scott to capture perfectly the high-powered dramatics that punctuate much of secondary school.

Both Ally and Jake have the potential to be cookie-cutter characters: the poor misunderstood heroine and the arrogant attractive boy.  But Ally and Jake are funny and the surrounding cast of characters worth their weight in gold (Ally’s new friend Annie is worth the price of admission all on her own). It can be difficult to write characters like Ally, someone who was once part of the entitled elite, without making their transformation either unbelievable or trite. Scott navigates Ally’s new life with compassion, but she also lets Ally’s past behaviour be a part of her current life; there are repercussions for what has gone on before. She’s so dead to us is about more than a girl and a boy, more than a clique and the girl it decides to ostracise, but it never loses sight of the inner voices of the characters it depicts, and it’s a world well worth visiting again.

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