BookBrowse Reviews The Jills by Karen Parkman

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A professional cheerleader discovers Buffalo's seedy underbelly when she goes searching for her missing friend.

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Being an NFL cheerleader is much less glamorous than it appears. As a member of the Buffalo Bills' "Buffalo Jills" squad, Virginia is subject to poverty-level pay, strict appearance requirements, and the attention of creepy men. But for Virginia, a lifelong dancer, the trade-off is worth it. How else would she get the chance to dance in front of a crowd of thousands every week? She also gets to spend time with her best friend, Jeanine, a fellow Jill. While Virginia is the classic eldest daughter stereotype, Jeanine is bold and carefree. So when Jeanine goes missing, others brush it off as just Jeanine being Jeanine, but Virginia is desperate to find her. Did she really just take off to go partying? Or is her disappearance the work of one of the Jills' obsessive fans—or someone even more dangerous?

Virginia feels protective of Jeanine in part because of her own past trauma. Her younger sister, Laura, was her constant companion until Laura fell into drug addiction as a teen. After trying to help Laura several times, Virginia eventually made the difficult decision to cut off contact, and she still feels guilty about it. Jeanine has in many ways become a surrogate sibling to Virginia, and Virginia feels like she can't lose another sister. But as she uncovers more clues, Virginia starts to wonder whether Jeanine really is an innocent victim.

The Jills is partly about Virginia questioning her own assumptions. Virginia's dad was the accountant for a local crime family, one involved in illegal gambling rings and other dubious enterprises. He died when Virginia was 10, and she remembers him fondly as gregarious and loving, a consummate good guy, despite his slightly seedy occupation. But as the book progresses and Virginia encounters figures from her father's past, she's forced to reckon with the fact that he may have been involved in much darker enterprises than she realized—and that he was far from a perfect family man.

Similarly, Virginia has always loved cheering on the Jills, despite the creepy fans and rules that feel archaic in the year 2011. However, she's appalled by the team's seeming lack of concern after Jeanine goes missing. And her feelings toward the squad cool further when she becomes so wrapped up in the search that her normally perfect attendance slips, and she begins to fall out of grace as the coach's golden girl. As she bonds with other black sheep on the squad, she learns that she's been shielded from the worst of the treatment they face for years, because she's the family friend of a big sponsor.

The biggest shock for many readers will be the awful working conditions the Jills are subjected to (inspired by real life—see Beyond the Book for more details). Their lives couldn't be further from those of the athletes they cheer on. Not only do Virginia and her colleagues cheer at games for free (getting paid only for special events), but they can be benched for minor appearance infractions like gaining a bit of weight, and they're encouraged to politely deflect harassment rather than stand up for themselves. Virginia is portrayed as someone who goes along with the flow so as not to ruffle feathers—but she grows more frustrated with these unjust practices as she realizes no one else is going to save her.

While Karen Parkman's debut novel is character-driven with a strong internal growth arc, it also delivers enough twists and turns to satisfy thriller fans, with a cast full of intriguing and untrustworthy characters. Even after Virginia learns what happened to Jeanine, more mysteries continue to unfold in the book's final chapters. Though these questions are eventually resolved, Virginia's own future is more ambiguous—but readers will come away with the sense that she is ready to face whatever it throws at her.

This review first ran in the February 11, 2026 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.