There’s a grim familiarity to stories about young girls falling prey to men in positions of power. As readers, we recognize the girl’s first heady thrill at being called special by someone who seems to have the authority above all others to declare it, and then we follow that plotline to its heart-rending conclusion. The best-selling authors Candace Bushnell and Katie Cotugno explore this territory in RULES FOR BEING A GIRL (Balzer + Bray, 304 pp., $19.99; ages 13 and up), a book so engaging and lively it might take you a moment to pinpoint the disquiet you feel upon reaching its end.

A senior in high school, Marin Lospato is delighted to find herself alone with her beloved and crushed-upon English teacher, Mr. Beckett (“Bex”) — right up until the moment he kisses her. Afterward, as she unpacks the incident with her best friend, Chloe, the two stumble past Bex’s obvious abuse of power to make the encounter as much Marin’s fault as it can be. “Maybe he was just picking up what you were putting down,” Chloe suggests before finally determining she “wouldn’t try to ruin somebody’s whole life over something I wasn’t even sure I interpreted correctly.”

Bex quickly dismisses their kiss as “a little bit of confusion,” and Marin herself wonders what a proportionate response might be, considering he wasn’t a “creepy perv” who “forced himself on me in a dark, deserted alley.” But what seems to perturb Marin most is her struggle to untangle what she knows was wrong from her deep-seated feeling that she has no right to be upset about it or seek justice for it. Gradually, Marin’s eyes are opened to a school environment where acts of sexism and inequality, some of which she has participated in, are woven into the landscape.

Furious, Marin writes an editorial for the school newspaper entitled “Rules for Being a Girl,” decrying this double standard. Bex warns it just might draw the ire of her peers. He’s right, of course: Chloe wonders if Marin has “raging PMS”; Marin’s bland boyfriend worries she’s become a “crazy feminist.” But now that Marin is aware of the “thousand great and small unfairnesses” that surround her, she can’t remain silent. Soon she’s challenging Bex’s uninspired all-white, all-male reading lists and starting a feminist book club.

Marin’s education in feminism is shown through in-depth discussions with secondary characters. At their best, these serve as thoughtful entry points on topics including intersectionality, race and class, emphasizing the importance of considering experiences outside one’s own limited and privileged perspective. At their worst, they come across as didactic and heavy-handed, causing Marin’s scene partners to lose a bit of their dimension and detracting from an otherwise engrossing narrative.

When Marin does report Bex’s behavior to the principal, her speaking up is punished and rewarded in equal measure. She loses Chloe but gains Gray Kendall, a good-looking lacrosse player with a reputation he may or may not have earned. Bex sabotages her admission to Brown but gets what’s coming to him in the end, though not before Marin makes a shocking and painful discovery about the full extent of his abuse.

Bushnell and Cotugno’s writing is sincere and heartfelt, its humor clever, and Marin and her friends are easy to like and root for. “Rules for Being a Girl” has a keen eye for the “innocuous” kind of misogyny that is so normalized and ingrained in our daily lives we no longer immediately recognize it as a pathway to greater harm.

Marin has an optimistic outlook regarding her future, but it’s hard to reconcile what is ultimately a more sweet than bitter ending with the reality that gives a book like this relevance. That’s what makes it so disquieting. At her lowest point Marin, anguished, asks: “Why doesn’t anybody care about what happened? … Why doesn’t anybody care about me?”

Though it may not be the most explosive novel you’ll read about an older man and a teenage girl this year, it is no less valuable, and no less devastating.