taken from Goodreads:
"Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:Debate Club.Her father’s “bunny rabbit.”
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure.
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
Frankie Laundau-Banks.
No longer the kind of girl to take “no” for an answer.
Especially when “no” means she’s excluded from her boyfriend’s all-male secret society.
Not when her ex boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she’s smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew’s lying to her.
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.
Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind.
This is the story of how she got that way."
It seems there's an entire genre of young-adult literature that's set at boarding schools, and my guess is that I've read most, if not all, of them. The appeal is obvious: it's a self-contained world, set among ivy-covered institutions of higher learning, with characters that come from the old-money, "Old Boys" club. And that's just the problem Frankie has with the situation at her exclusive boarding school.
The characters are top-notch, the writing perfect -- with just the right combination of high-school snarkiness, main character introspection, and a mix of formats (excerpts from letters, brief asides to explain the history of this or that particular place, email exchanges) -- and the subject is one that I've not seen any YA author address with such skill or perspective.
That's what I think I loved most about this novel: that Lockhart tackles the confusing issue of being completely smitten with a boy, but also being completely unwilling to let the relationship stand on his terms. Frankie is sick of being seen only for her physical package -- viewed as sweet, adorable, pretty, etc. -- and not as the intelligent, ambitious, opinionated person she is. The issue of gender roles aside, this book is also a great introduction to the concept of civil disobedience, an examination of why we follow the rules we do. Having taught American literature to juniors for several years, I can tell you that this age is prime for thinking about this issue.
The reviews for this novel are somewhat mixed -- while many readers have raved about it, there are others who felt it was pretentious, silly, and just plain boring. I think that comes down to a matter of taste in prose style and character development. I'm firmly in the "rave" camp. Easily a 5-star read.
