Toby Klein

Toby Klein is the sharp, computer-savvy protagonist recruited into the bizarre secret CIA cheerleading operation in Jennifer Lynn Barnes's The Squad series. A self-described hacker and social outsider, Toby is the last person anyone would expect to find on a cheerleading squad — which is precisely why the program recruited her. Her technical skills make her valuable; her outsider perspective makes her dangerous to the social order of both the squad and the high school that serves as their cover.

Toby's voice is one of the series' greatest pleasures — skeptical, funny, and entirely unimpressed by the cheerleading world she's been dropped into, even as she comes to genuinely respect the girls she works alongside. Barnes uses Toby to examine the gap between surface and depth — the cheerleader stereotype versus the actual competence and intelligence of the girls who perform it, and what it means to be more than what the world assumes you are.