YMMV / The Clique

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Are Claire, Dylan and Kristen bullies or bully victims who play along with Massie and Alicia because they're so afraid of them? The final books in the series very strongly hint towards this.
• Broken Aesop: The story often flip flops between elaborating on the true meaning of friendship and how the concept of controlling, social hierarchies and cliques is inherently toxic, while at the same time allowing the titular clique that embodies these flaws never face any karma for their misdeeds, no matter how drastic or scarring they may be.
• Critical Dissonance: Meager critical respect did little to quell this series' popularity back in the day. Today, it's a different story.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Massie shows several classic traits of sociopathy, such as her reliance on emotional manipulation and bullying to get her way, viewing almost everyone around as merely pawns to her social status, and her obsession with always being on the top regardless of who she has to hurt to get there. There's a WMG detailing it, though it's unknown if she was intentionally written that way.
  • Alicia trusts nobody, is willing to backstab anyone, and wants nothing more than to be the center of attention at all costs. And is also occasionally implied to be sexually active. At 12-13.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: In the final book Massie leaves The Pretty Committee behind due to her father getting a job in England, forcing her to start high school away from her initial clique. A Bittersweeet Ending in some regards but this only drives the point home about the series Karma Houdini ideology as moving to a new country with reinstated wealth isn't what one would call a punishment. Not to mention that Massie leaves Alicia of all people in charge of the clique now, whose probably the only one out of her group of friends who could qualify as legimiately evil.
• Friendly Fandoms: Many fans of the series became Gossip Girl fans.
• Growing the Beard: Starting with These Boots are Made for Stalking and My Little Phony. There's more meaningful character development (particularly with Claire, Massie, and Layne and Cam) compared to most of the other books and a lot of the Flanderization that was going on gets undone — in particular, the characters actually start to mature and Claire finally grows out of letting Massie remold her into yet another PC clone and tries to stand up to her. In short, the series finally becomes the series people were actually expecting/hoping for. Unfortunately, it came too little too late, in the third-to-last and second-to-last books out of a nearly two-dozen long-running series most people want to forget.
• Hard-to-Adapt Work: Despite its popularity in the 2000s, the premise and writing of the series makes it difficult to adapt. It's an Indecisive Parody told from the point-of-view of a middle school-aged Alpha Bitch and her Girl Posse. The characters are unsympathetic and regularly exhibit Troubling Unchildlike Behavior. It's not family-friendly enough for mainstream adaptations, so the only adaptation was a niche Direct to Video film.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The plastic surgery jokes are this now that preteens getting them has been revealed to sadly be Truth in Television.
  • Nowadays, girls are dressing too old for their age and are being sexualized like the Pretty Committee.
  • Now that more is known about eating disorders, nearly everything about Dylan has become this.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Dylan. Even the girl portraying her in the official photos is incredibly skinny. Even the girls In-Universe point this out.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The author's Costume Porn is described as if the Pretty Committee are in their twenties when they are much younger, which makes it feel like paedophilia and can be very off-putting.
  • 12-13 year old girls with breast implants.
• Nightmare Fuel: The implication that Alicia was forced by her parents to get breast implants stands out due to how upsetting it is.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Among the genuine fans, Massington (Massie/Derrington); Clam (Claire/Cam); Dolert (Dylan/Plovert); Jalicia (Josh/Alicia); Closh (Claire/Josh).
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Alicia tries to bring in In-Universe examples when she tries to form her own clique: "Strawberry" for Dylan, Kori for Kristen, "Faux-Livia" for herself and herself for Massie. It ends up failing miserably, partly because Alicia can't help but think of them as Replacement Scrappies for her real friends (and partly because the "knockoffs" are Too Dumb to Live)
  • Ironically enough these same "knockoffs" form Claire's own (very short-lived) "anti-"clique in My Little Phony.
  • When Alicia starts yet another clique (this time by stealing away the originals) Massie is desperate enough to outright hire her own Replacement Scrappies from a talent agency, this time handpicked based on not resembling the people they replace (though she can't help herself on some points, picking a girl known for starring in commercials as a soccer player ala Kristen who also co-starred with Claire on Dial L for Loser). It doesn't end well, for the exact same reasons why Alicia's first attempt failed.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Hey look, Teddy and Molly are still friends!
  • Vanessa Marano and Elizabeth Gillies too!
• The Scrappy:
  • Cam tends to fall towards this, if nothing else dragging Claire down with him through her constant obsession with him.
  • Alicia due to the nightmarish amounts of squick she tends to cause in most readers. Even back in the series' heyday there were many fans who geniunely disliked her.
• Squick:
  • Todd putting hidden cameras in Massie's shower. The same shower his sister uses.
  • The sexualization of middle school aged girls really hasn't fared well with most readers. Some reviewers have even compared this to child porn.
  • As well as the fact that a lot of the preteen characters have had plastic surgery.
  • The implication that Alicia's breasts are implants. As well as the hints that she might be sexually active. Some find the idea of a preteen girl with a chest that large in general to be this.
  • Cam is rightfully grossed out when he finds out Alicia (a fellow seventh grader) wants to go out with his older brother, Harris, who is in his junior year of high school.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: A common complaint about the series, mostly due to the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and unsympathetic characters. The fact that nobody suffered in the end apparently angered quite a few readers. And anything even remotely resembling Character Development happens so late in the series you wonder why the author even bothered.
• Unintentional Period Piece: It's very clear this series was envisioned before The Great Recession came along. Pretty much everything about it displays the materialistic excesses of 2000s pop culture.

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