History Literature / GirlsWithSharpSticks

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Guardian Bose, the very large and muscular man who the academy has hired to keep watch over the girls. It's stated that he could utterly break them with ease, and even when behaving normally, he regularly pushes the students around and inadvertently injures them. Towards the end, [[spoiler:he holds his own against ''five'' students at once. It takes Sydney stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors to take him down, and he still goes down swinging.]]

* BigManOnCampus: Jonah in ''Razor Hearts'', the captain of the rugby team who puts on a LovableJock image and is regarded as the coolest guy in school, but [[BitchInSheepsClothing also has a reputation as a rapist]].

* EngineeredPublicConfession: Two of 'em in rapid succession. [[spoiler:First, Mena records Jonah trying to rape her. Second, after Jonah grabs her phone and throws it out the window, Sydney records him attempting to intimidate Mena into silence. Ridgeview Prep is scandalized as things snowball into a massive sexual assault scandal, and heads roll as a result.]]

* AmbiguouslyBrown: Sydney and Quentin are referred to as having dark skin, the former as having artificially straightened hair on top of it. Marcella's skin is also described as light brown. Guardian Bose's race is never specified, but his last name is of Bengali origin and is shared with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhas_Chandra_Bose a national hero]] in India.
** Sydney's race comes up for the first time in ''Razor Hearts'', where it's noted that she's the only black girl who goes to Ridgeview Prep, an elite private school that had faced racial discrimination lawsuits in the recent past. For her, it's the first time she's ever encountered racism.

* ArtificialHuman: [[spoiler:The girls at the academy were created to serve as submissive personal servants. The school environment is there to "raise" them as human, as the first prototypes, who lacked real life experience outside their programming, proved to be too vapid to make for good companions.]]

* NiceGuy: Jackson, the boy who Mena meets at the gas station. He and his friend Quentin have long suspected that something strange is happening at Innovations Academy, [[spoiler:and he has good reason to, as his father was a former investor in the school who likely killed his wife when she spoke out against it. His interest in the academy is that he realizes it's connected to his mother's death.]]

* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: Lennon Rose, with her HairOfGoldHeartOfGold, her sunny disposition, and her flowery name. [[spoiler:So of course she's the first one to disappear.]]

* SignificantGreenEyedRedhead: Annalise. [[spoiler:She used to be blonde, but her last sponsor didn't like her and sent her back, during which time they changed her to a redhead. At the end, she loses one of her eyes and gets it replaced with [[MismatchedEyes a brown one]].]]

* SchoolgirlLesbians: Marcella and Brynn, who have to keep their relationship a secret from the school's ultra-conservative faculty.

The series has two books so far:

'''''Girls with Sharp Sticks''''' is a {{young adult|Literature}} novel written by Suzanne Young, author of ''Literature/TheProgram''.

* IceQueen: The headmaster's wife Leandra Petrov. [[spoiler:Even after TheReveal that she's a ReverseMole trying to help the students, she has no problem [[IDidWhatIHadToDo doing what she thinks is necessary]] for her goal.]]

* ReverseMole: [[spoiler:Leandra is secretly conspiring to help the students escape and to take down Innovations Corporation.]]

* MeatSackRobot: [[spoiler:The girls' brains are mechanical, but the rest is a human body grown in a lab, because their sponsors felt that synthetic flesh fell into the [[invoked]] UncannyValley.]]

* MeatSackRobot: [[spoiler:The girls' brains are mechanical, but the rest is a human body grown in a lab, because their sponsors felt that synthetic flesh fell into the UncannyValley.]]

* ManInTheMachine: Inverted. [[spoiler:The brain is the ''only'' part of the girls at Innovation Academy that's actually mechanical. The rest is a human body grown in a lab, because their sponsors felt that synthetic flesh fell into the UncannyValley.]]

** [[spoiler:During the fight with Guardian Bose, Annalise is left badly injured with a piece of glass sticking out of her left eye. Given that she's an ArtificialHuman, though, it's easy to replace the damaged eye with a new one, even if it's the wrong color.]]

* AmbiguouslyBrown: Sydney and Quentin are referred to as having dark skin, the former as having artificially straightened hair on top of it. Guardian Bose's race is never specified, but his last name is of Bengali origin.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Guardian Bose, the very large and muscular man who the academy has hired to keep watch over the girls. It's stated that he could utterly break them with ease, and even in his regular violent mode, he regularly pushes the students around and inadvertently injures them. Towards the end, [[spoiler:he holds his own against ''five'' students at once. It takes Sydney stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors to take him down, and he still goes down swinging.]]
* BoardingSchoolOfHorrors: Innovations Academy. Because creating submissive women ain't easy.
* {{Brainwashed}}: Impulse control therapy is the medical procedure that the academy uses to discipline students who have been acting out. The way it's describe, it [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything strongly resembles a lobotomy]]. [[spoiler:It's how the girls' artificial brains are reprogrammed when they start going haywire.]]

** [[spoiler:During the fight with Guardian Bose, Annalise is left badly injured with a piece of glass sticking out of her right eye. Given that she's an ArtificialHuman, though, it's easy to replace the damaged eye with a new one, even if it's the wrong color.]]

* HeManWomanHater: The founders of the school were this, seeing women's rights as a threat to their power. Having failed to stop the feminist movement, they created a boarding school where wealthy families could send their daughters to embrace more traditional gender roles, hoping to at least hold onto a slice of the next generation. [[spoiler:Jackson's father was one such investor, a men's rights activist who is strongly implied to have killed his mother when she found out what was actually going on. It's later [[TomatoInTheMirror revealed]] that the above is the cover story; in truth, they simply decided to cut human women out of the equation altogether, using the academy to create {{Artificial Human}}s to serve as their perfect, docile, submissive wives.]]

* NiceGuy: Jackson, the boy who Mena meets at the gas station. He and his friend Quentin have long suspected that something strange is happening at Innovations Academy, [[spoiler:and he has good reason to, as his father was a former investor in the school who likely killed his wife when she spoke out against it.]]

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Guardian Bose, the very large and muscular man who the academy has hired to keep watch over the girls. It's stated that he could utterly break them with ease, and even in his regular violent mode, [[spoiler:and he proves it towards the end when he holds his own against ''five'' of them at once. It takes Sydney stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors to take him down, and he still goes down swinging.]]

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Guardian Bose, the very large and muscular man who the academy has hired to keep watch over the girls. It's stated that he could utterly break them with ease, [[spoiler:and he proves it towards the end when he holds his own against ''five'' of them at once. It takes Sydney stabbing him in the neck with a pair of scissors to take him down, and he still goes down swinging.]]