Becca is worried about making friends after she and her mom move from LA to a ritzy suburb of Oakland. To her surprise, Piedmont High's posse of popular girls adopt her on her very first day. She soon discovers that they have ulterior motives; they are werewolves and want her to join their vigilante pack. They hunt predators, the kind that will never get punished because of their social status. Saddled with an offer she can't refuse, Becca must find a way to keep her humanity in the face of ritualized animalistic violence.
Squad contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless:
- None of the pack member's parents ever notice that their daughters come home late on the nights that boys go missing from the surrounding towns. Justified, as nobody would ever suspect their daughter to be a serial killer. We also only ever see Becca sneaking back into her house, and her mother isn't home most of the time because of work.
- Implied with the reason why the pack are specifically murdering predators in the first place. The justice system will give them a slap on the wrist at best, as many of them are too rich to punish.
- Author Appeal: Maggie Tokuda-Hall stated in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle
that though the titular squad are horrible people, "indulging in that revenge fantasy is so satisfying and also such a gift to me as a person who has been sexually assaulted." - Asshole Victim: Most of the men the pack kill are this. They purposefully seek out rapists and the like so that they feel less guilty about killing them.
- Attack on the Heart: The leader of the college pack, Allyson, does this to Arianna after learning that she left evidence at the murder scene again. She then makes
Marley and Becca eat Arianna's heart to return them to normal humans. - "Back to Camera" Pose: On the book's cover, all of the other werewolves are facing forward, with their backs to the audience. Becca is the only one looking back and she gives the audience a knowing stare.
- Beneath Suspicion: Nobody, police included, would suspect four scrawny rich girls for the murders of the boys in the area.
- Bittersweet Ending: Arianna is killed so her heart can be eaten to depower Becca and Marley, but Becca and Marley are happy together and delve further into their relationship.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Becca frequently gets into arguments with her mom over the smallest stuff. Justified, as Becca and her mother cannot talk to each other normally, so they repress their emotions until it bottles over. In addition, Becca's mother isn't really around much, so Becca has to deal with most of her issues by herself. To be fair, it's not like she can tell her mother what's really bothering her, because most of that involves revealing that she is a murderer.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The pack rips men apart limb by limb while mauling them, though it debatable for about how much of it that the victims were conscious.
- Death by Falling Over: Becca accidentally kills Thatcher by pushing him over in self-defence while he was trying to sexually assault her. Justified, as she has super-strength in her human form as part of her werewolf powers.
- De-power: Becca and Marley are forced by Allyson, the college pack leader, to eat Arianna's heart so that they become normal humans again.
- Devoured by the Horde: The men that the pack eat are basically attacked by four wolves at once until they die. After that, they are split up amongst the group.
- Disproportionate Retribution: One boy gets eaten for merely finding Becca and Marley attractive.
- Dramatic Irony: Thatcher's father assumes that his son's murderer is male and murdered him For the Evulz. Only the pack and the audience know that Becca (who is female) murdered him in self-defense. They basically just stand there at his funeral, pretending to be grieving, when inside they are actually celebrating his death.
- Eat the Evidence: The pack disposes of most of the evidence by well, eating it, though it remains unseen how they dispose of clothes.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: The pack is pretty diverse for a majority-white small town. Becca is Asian and lesbian, Marley is queer, and Amanda is Black. The college pack is even more diverse, with one being a hijabi, and more body-shape diversity.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Marley, a blonde, has made out with a lot of men. So many, that she can't even remember many of them.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: The pack specifically chooses pretty girls to join them, making most of the members this. Justified, as they take turns being bait for rapists, to lure them into secluded areas for an ambush.
- Freudian Slip: Arianna accidentally reveals that she intends to use Becca as bait at a party.Becca [trying on new dress]: I feel like an idiot.Amanda: You actually look cute.Marley: Super hot.Arianna: Total bait.Becca: Bait? Don't you mean babe?Arianna: Sure.
- Fully-Embraced Fiend: Justified. Most of the werewolves, except Becca, fully embrace their wolf forms and use them to go after men who hurt women and get away with it due to their social status.
- High-Class Cannibal: The pack is mostly all filthy rich, with Arianna's father being the head of the famous Vandergum family. Doesn't stop them from eating mostly other rich people, with some poorer people tossed in.
- Horror Hunger: The werewolves feel an irresistible urge for human meat if they don't feed for at least a month; they tried deer, but it didn't work. They kill assholes to justify it to themselves.
- How We Got Here: Future Becca is narrating the story.
- Hypocrite: Downplayed. When Becca and her mother get into an argument over Thatcher's disappearance, Becca's mother says that she thinks that Arianna's father with a hit on him for breaking up with her; she condemns it because she feels that he didn't deserve to die for apparently cheating on her. Becca argues back with the fact that her mother said that Becca's father deserved to die for cheating on her. Becca's mother points out that she didn't actually kill him, which shuts Becca up.
- Innocently Insensitive: Marley doesn't get why it's rude to pair up Becca and Bo, the only two Asian people at their school, just because it would be cute because they're both Asian. She also associates being lesbian with being a pervert. Justified, as she is sheltered from growing up in a small majority-white suburb and she is closeted and struggling with her sexuality.
- Killing in Self-Defense: Becca kills Thatcher while he was trying to sexually assault her.
- Literal Maneater: The squad uses one of them as bait (by dressing them up in really skimpy clothes) for the rapists they lure, before the rest of them jump in and devour him.
- Lovable Alpha Bitch: Arianna mercilessly bullies the less popular kids, but once you get to know her, she's pretty nice. She even helps Becca hide Thatcher's body.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: After Thatcher is killed by Becca, Arianna puts in body in the local stream. Said stream has a reputation for drunk kids hanging out near it, and she thought it was plausible that he could have stumbled into the stream while drunk, and drowned.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: The werewolves eat human men while in wolf form.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Arianna Vandergum, the pack's leader, is basically Ariana Grande (alopecia-inducing high ponytail included) with an extra "n", if Grande was a crazy cannibalistic serial killer.
- No Sympathy: Becca's mother isn't concerned over the fact that her daughter's best friend's boyfriend was found dead in a stream and her daughter is grieving. She compares Becca's mental strength to that of a horse, and tells her to focus on college admissions instead. Justified, as Becca is really good at hiding her true emotions from her mother, and her mother doesn't know that Becca feels guilty over being the one to kill Thatcher.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: The offer the pack gives Becca at the beginning of the book is essentially, "Join us or die."
- Our Werewolves Are Different:
- All of the werewolves we see are scrawny women and as such their werewolf forms look sickly and rail-thin.
- The werewolves' fur color depends on their hair color - Marley (blonde) has light grey fur, and Becca (black hair) has stark black fur for example.
- They retain their sapience and memory as wolves, which is essential as they have a specific hunting target.
- They are turned via bite, and can only lose their power if they eat the heart of the Alpha.
- They are extraordinarily strong even in human form.
- Picky People Eater: Marley is partial toward men's livers.
- Popular Is Evil: Exaggerated. The popular girls at Piedmont High are cannibalistic serial killers.
- Power Incontinence:
- Becca accidentally breaks a glass by squeezing it too hard right after getting her werewolf powers:
- Becca accidentally kills Thatcher by pushing him too hard after he tries to sexually assault her. Justified, as she probably wasn't thinking straight and conscious of what she was doing.
- Marley admits to denting the gym floor during volleyball practice when she spiked too hard. Luckily, nobody other than Amanda noticed.
- Sex for Solace: Downplayed. Becca and Marley make out after Becca has a bad argument with her mother and broke down in tears.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: The girls are always sure to get naked before they turn, so that their clothing doesn't rip.
- Speak Ill of the Dead: Arianna insults her dead boyfriend Thatcher's body, and middle fingers his corpse. Justified, as he tried to rape Becca.
- Vigilante Execution: Basically what the pack does every month. They kill people without a trial and no evidence that would be acceptable in a court of law. Justified, in the sense that most of the people they kill are rich assholes who escape justice due to being rich.
- Wolves Always Howl at the Moon: As seen on the cover of the book, the pack are very fond of howling at the moon in werewolf form.
- Working-Class Werewolves: Inverted. All of the werewolves we see are filthy rich. The poorest one, Becca, is at least upper-middle class.
