Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Johnson, E. K. Exit, Pursued by a Bear. 2016. 387 mins, 248p. ISBN 978-1-10199458-0. Available as an audiobook on Overdrive.

Palermo Heights is a small Canadian high school where cheerleading is the most competitive and highly rated sport. Forget football, basketball and hockey. Cheerleading is the sport every serious athlete participates in. For three years Hermione (her parents were big Harry Potter fans) has worked hard. The only freshman with her friend Polly to join the varsity squad, she has climbed the cheerleading pyramid to become captain her senior year. Even Leo, her boyfriend, is a member of the squad.

Every summer, during the last two weeks of August, cheerleading teams from many Ontario high schools meet at a camp where they train to get ready for the new season. The Palermo squad is looked up to, but when the time comes to share a dedication at the beginning of camp Hermione aims to end once and for all a curse that has plagued the team since the death of a student seven years ago: Every year, one of the cheerleaders has become pregnant and has had to drop out of the squad. This is the year that the curse ends.

However, when someone slips a drug in Hermione’s drink and then rapes her, she becomes that girl from the curse. Pregnant, Hermione has some hard decisions to make. How does she regain control when she can’t remember anything that happened that night? How does she deal with Leo’s jealousy and the rumors that spread around school? Can she avoid becoming this year’s cautionary tale cheerleaders will talk about at future camps? And will a run to the provincial cheer championship trigger her into a total meltdown when she has to return to the site of the attack? Readers will appreciate the hard choices Hermione makes to deal with this situation and end her senior year on a hopeful but inconclusive note.

Readers who enjoyed this book will appreciate Speak, where Melinda finds herself in a similar situation but deals with it in a completely different way.