In a reading slump. It's not you, it's me.

I could not read this book fast enough.

Wow do i have SO MUCH to say about this book! I went in without any prior expectations and was shocked by how much I enjoyed it. Even though its a pretty slow read, I felt that it was intentionally done so- readers really get to know Lee as a character and get to see her growth throughout her four years at Ault boarding school. Towards the end of the book I felt extremely frustrated with Lee  I hated how she let Cross just use her sexually without ever even asking for an explanation for his constant visits (until the very end, and even then he never really did elaborate)! Lee deserved so much more than how he treated her.
What drew me into the book was how well Sittenfeld described what it's like being in high school. I personally didn't go to a boarding school but I could still really relate to Lee's experience of feeling of being on the outside. One of my favorite stories in the book was when they played school-wide assassin, it was the first step that Lee took to go out of her comfort zone and it was just seemed like so much fun.
For some reason Lee really reminded me of Vanessa from My Dark Vanessa - they're both extremely socially awkward and have similar experiences of struggling in a place pouring with wealth while they grew up the exact opposite.
Overall I loved this book; I took any spare moment I had to try and read a couple of pages. I wish the ending had gone a different route but in many ways it fit with Lee's passive personality  But I did really love that she told her truth to the NY time journalist, she deserved to be heard and not have to lie about her experience there.  

The protagonist of this book made me ill. There is teen angst and then there is just whining. Lee Fiora is a whiner. Parts of the book were actually offensive. She has a secret crush on the most popular guy in her grade, they have one encounter their freshman year and no real contact again until they are seniors. So, this guy shows up, drunk, in the middle of the night; they have not talked in three years, and within ten minutes he has his hand in her underwear, AND SHE IS FINE WITH THIS! Ugh!

She also has to be one of the most ungrateful individuals I have read. She is at boarding school on a scholarship and her parents pay a small portion of her tuition. Instead of acknowledging the sacrifice they have made all she does is scorn the small amount that they pay. She does receive a well deserved slap from her dad. It was my favorite part.

I put this on my YA shelf because of the age of the characters. However, I would never recommend it for a teen to read. For that matter I wouldn't advise that anyone read this, hence the single star- my least frequent rating.

A friend recommended me this book because Lee, the main character and narrator of Prep, reminded her of me, and this kind of thing is always a compliment, no matter how insufferable or melodramatic or pathetic the character may at times be, because it means that the other person saw you and - even in the midst of your own insufferableness and melodrama and patheticness - saw you as a protagonist. I related very much to Lee, and if you made a Venn diagram of all the ways in which she is annoying and all the ways in which I am annoying, it would be nearly a perfect circle. This book was very comforting for me to read for that reason, because it was like a mirror, and it was also comforting to read at this particular time, in the wake of my college graduation and on the brink of some strange, fumbling version of adulthood, as I muddle through the same tiring, amusing reflections on where I have been and where I am going, liminal spaces, the precipice. (Lee has, by the end of the novel, graduated high school and not college, which means our respective life stages are technically four years removed. But many of the questions seem to stay the same, or maybe they're perennial - maybe these are just the questions you have for the rest of your life.) This book was also comforting to read given, specifically, the last two months of my life, which I have spent possibly falling in love with someone who does not love me. Mostly this experience has been entirely depressing and exhausting, with me spending long days moping around the house, waking every morning at 4:00 or 5:00 or 6:00 from stress before falling back into a groggy sleep until noon, going on manic ten-mile walks in an effort to forget, numbing myself with an oversaturation of media content, and calling one of four friends to rehash the same conversation I just had with them two days ago. Intermittently I am crying and wishing I had never met the other person in the first place. Prep did not necessarily make this experience feel any better, but it did make me feel less lonely and a little less like I was drowning - like maybe this life was something I could bear after all. Anyway, point is, I'll miss getting to read this book and to live in its world and, at least for a bit, to set down my own.

Where do I send the invoice for the therapy I’ll need after this book, Ms. Sittenfeld?? A compulsive and nearly unbearable read!

Let's see, a pathetic protagonist (I don't say that lightly) that by the end of the novel remains pathetic? Doesn't grow in any perceptible way, doesn't learn anything? A very disturbing image of boarding schools and sociology in general. No, just no. It was well written though, but excellent writing constricted by tedious characterization doesn't make for fun reading. Maybe it was just too real. And this is how human beings really are to each other. How would I know?

There was literally only one thing that I liked in this book, which I won't be mentioning it here, but it was sweet. So yeah, no.

OK, listen. The writing is superb, to be sure. The thing is, it's amazing storytelling and horrifying story.

Anyone looking for reasons Not to send their underage/teenage kids to boarding schools should read this novel. This is for you.

This was so dramatic I loved it

This was a huge disappointment to me. The only other book I have read by this author is Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice and I enjoyed that one so much I thought I was in for another treat. Sadly it was not to be.
Although the writing was beautiful and the recounting of life in a boarding school was probably fairly accurate, the main character was seriously unlikeable. And boring. And pathetic. And I could go on but I won't!
The story was totally lacking in any direction or action and I nearly gave up at least twice. I ploughed on hoping that Lee would develop a back bone and benefit in some way from her experiences but she did neither of those things.
So this author has given me one five star read and one two star (and that is generous). Of course I will still read her books but with less confidence next time:)

I recently read a Curtis Sittenfield(a gal) short story in The New Yorker and remembered that I had a book or two of hers on my shelves. I need to read more female authors, so here we go ...

Started last night. Lee is in her first year at Ault and dealing with the whole trauma of adjustment thing. I went to an all-male(now co-ed) boarding school in Connecticut called Loomis (now Loomis-Chaffee) and can identify somewhat, although the girls emotional environment is obviously different, not to mention the generation gap(60's for me, 80's for Sittenfield(she went to Groton). The biggest obstacle here aside from the boredom factor of female emotional challenges, is the rather droning narration. It reminds me of how my own prose sounded when I pursued creative writing for a while in the mid-9o's. Not horrible or anything, but somewhat lacking in ... Nabokovian "zip" - or something. Anyway, I'll keep at it.

The story has moved into the spring of Lee's first year at Ault. I have to say that I'm enjoying the story, though it continues to be kind of dry and "un-dramatic." Seems kind of like a memoir, actually. There is a bit of a credibility problem when Lee understands things about herself or others or about relationships that are pretty subtle. I certainly didn't have ANY of that back when I was 14. Plus, when I was in boarding school it was all-male. The co-ed nature of Ault definitely makes a difference and amps up the emotional stakes. During last night's reading I encountered a whiff of the real-life sexual nastiness that happened at St. Paul's recently.

- Lee and Cross - she's obsessed with looking at him from afar. Meanwhile, he could care less - typical!

- There's more than a vague whiff of girl-stuff from "The Hunger Games," "Divergent," and "Twilight."

- I liked Conchita's "honesty" spiel at lacrosse. Lee is VERY much into self-effacement and hiding.

- Back to "The Hunger Games" when Assassin(non-deadly) starts up. I wonder if Suzanne Collins read this, or if THG came before? I also am reminded(even more) of "The Tenth Victim"(film).

Still moving on slowly in this interesting book. I'm in the middle of the haircut scene. Very squirmy and interesting. And honest(as far as I can tell - I'm not a girl/woman) ... This book is growing on me.

The benefits to Lee of becoming a renowned amateur hair cutter are front and center. Some reviewers express displeasure with the dour Lee, but I'm becoming more and more enamored of this book. Lee's who she is. She has her issues. A boarding school is like a social skills survival test. It ain't easy to be different. Now moving to 3.75* rounding up to 4*.

Onward to junior year at Ault and a parents weekend from hell for the Fiora family. This book keeps getting better and better. Last night came the Sin-Jun & Clara "surprise" and the meaning of "peach daiquiri" - funny and mortifying. Many of the G-reads reviewers complain about Lee's personality, but ... that's what the book is about!!! She's whiny, sarcastic, self-protective, controlled and self-absorbed because she's a teen-ager and she's afraid of being anything but aloof and uptight. Ault's not an easy place to grow up! She doesn't fit in and she knows it too well.

- In Massachusetts people(as in EVERYBODY) call I-90 "the Mass. Pike."

I could have finished this last night by staying up to midnight but ... that would've been poor self-care, so I'll do it today. Seems like the big stuff has already happened anyway. Lee's big "romance" with Cross fizzles out. Lee's intense emotions are explored by her via the author. More good teen-age, preppy, angsty stuff. For most kids it'd be better to go to a GOOD high school nearer home. But for some ... I was complaining to a friend years ago that boarding schools don't make good parents, and she replied "Better than no parents at all." How true. The "no parents at all" was close to my own situation. Lee would have struggled with her Mom and Dad no matter what. She's an introvert with an intense inner life. Not an easy row to hoe at all. If I have any final complaint about this book it's about the word-heavy and intensely interior tone of things. It's important to pay close attention, even if it's at times emotionally stressful and/or off-putting. At times it's not that easy to root for Lee, especially when she's SO desperate for "love" that she puts up with being used sexually. It's not that Cross was such a bad guy, but he was the popular jock-leader in his class and Lee was pretty much a "middle-class nobody" - it would've been a bad status move by him to acknowledge her as his girlfriend. Teen-aged boys are naturally shallow, clueless and sex-obsessed. Be careful, young ladies! In the bigger picture, the book captures well the overall snobbish and competitive environment of Ault. That Lee's going to Michigan is viewed as some kind of failure is ridiculous, of course.

Finished up last night as Lee again learns something painful ... life goes on - for EVERYBODY. The book concludes with an interesting interview with Curtis and a snippet(which I didn't read) from her next book.

This book was almost a 5* but in the end I'll give it a 4.25* rating, which rounds down to 4* Too bad so many G'reads reviewers were put off by Lee's less-than-inviting personality, but I do know what that feels like, having put down "Underworld" from having pretty much hated everyone in it!

I'm torn. There are things I loved about this book and things I hated. I want to give the book 2 stars, but what I loved about the book prevented me from doing so. I feel like 3 stars is so noncommittal one way or the other and if I had to pick one way or the other, I'd go down. I guess I'd give it 2.5 stars.

What I loved about the book: the voice. For the first quarter of the book, I found the narrator unsympathetic and annoying, and I realize that many people may find her so the entire novel. But then I started reading passages that could have been pulled from my own teenage mind and so while her inability to act still drove me crazy, I could relate. Looking around my high school at everyone so invested in the high school scene, I felt quite out of place and couldn't wait to get out onto a crowd that wasn't only obsessed with drinking and partying. While this is not the attitude of the protagonist, it produced the same results: home on weekend nights because people think you don't want to be around them when in fact you did very much so.

Lee Fiona is so insecure and so ridden with anxiety about social interaction she wishes she could be invisible and that I could relate to a little too well. Trying to leave things open so you can go either way eventually becomes your definition of being closed and reserved. And when social opportunities do rise, you become so fearful that they will go the wrong way that you'd rather not experience at all. What's good and fun becomes a burden and you'd rather be quiet and lonely and live in the quiet world of your own intuition. All of this was an almost painful commentary of my own youth that I couldn't help but love for its honesty. Even the end when good or bad you are so saddened by change you can't bare to pack up your things left vivid images of the depression that engulfed me personally the week I left the dorms my freshman year.

Here are some passages that I felt I particularly got:
"Of course, now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the idea that being a nuisance was that big of a deal? sometimes now I think of all the opportunities I didn't take ... and of how refusal became a habit for me, and then I felt it would be conspicuous if I ever did join in."
"This anxiety meant that I spent a lot of time hiding, usually in my room... And there were rules to the anxiety, practically mathematical in their consistency."
"[He] would be friendly to me from now on... but the friendliness would be hollow...[He] didn't want to talk, of course, it wasn't as if we had anything to say to each other. I knew all this, I understood the rules, but still nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny."
"I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret--everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiosity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was so tiring to have to worry."
"I don't know why you have the idea that you're not an asset to the school. You have just as many supporters as anyone else."
"I saw the naked walls and cleared-away surfaces as unkind reminders of just how fleeting it all was, just how illusive the idea that any of it belonged to us."
"We were hovering in the thin space before resolution, when the cards still might, but probably would not, fall in our favor. Usually, I just wanted to learn the ending. At that moment, however, the suspense didn't bother me so much...At least for a little while longer, it was almost nice not to know how it would all turn out."
"The other person's reaction was the only thing that ever counted to me...I often messed up with people, it was true, but it rarely happened because I was reading them wrong; it was because I got nervous, or because I could see too clearly that I was not what they wanted. And, in fact, it was in falling short that I truly excelled. I might fail to be what the other person sought, but as a failure, I'd accommodate them completely--I could be obsequious or truculent, sad or earnest or utterly silent. ... I was acting just the way he'd a girl ... should act."
"I began sliding into the familiar state of distrust and disorientation. It was like when I was supposed to meet someone in the library, and I'd arrive and they wouldn't be there, or I'd get to their door in the dorm and the moment before I knocked, I'd think Did I imagine we had something scheduled? Sometimes I couldn't even return phone calls, because I'd talk myself into believing I had made up the other person's call in the first place."
"The chore [of packing] had depressed me--all the space in the room, the blank walls. It reminded me how ephemeral our lives at Ault were."
"I'd always felt I had things to hide, reasons to apologize. But I hadn't, I saw now."
"If at Ault I'd felt mostly unnoticed, I'd also, at certain moments, felt scrutinized. After Ault, I was unaccounted for. But I should say too that I don't scrutinize others the way I once did. I did not, when I left Ault, carry my vigilance with me.... I remember myself as often unhappy at Ault, and yet my unhappiness was so alert and expectant; really, it was, in its energy, not that different from happiness."

These emotions are more severe than what I felt, but that underlying insecurity and concern more for other people and doing what they expect of you is there. So if you read the character and find her unrealistic because teenagers are demanding and self-centered (which she was too) I'm here to tell you, that some of us were like this. But while I had my moments of anger at bad teachers or dumb students, I didn't believe my social anxiety was entirely their fault, just as much a product of how much I moved. But I was also happy to be alone and separated, observant and uninvolved, proud of the fact that only 7 people signed my senior yearbook and I was the first person to dash away from graduation without goodbyes.

There was plenty else about her that I didn't relate to, most importantly how her insecurities about her looks made her susceptible to the inconsideration of jerky guys. I have never understand women/girl obsession and love for guys who treat them poorly. Despite being shy and reserved, when guys put on their macho attitude and put-you-down cockiness, I've found it my duty in life to deflate their egos by not chasing them and being quite clear that I find them less than attractive. A guy like Cross Sugarman would have been a guy I detested and he would have know how little I thought of him. Although we don't get much understanding of her relationships post-high school, I think Lee learned that devaluing yourself by allowing a guy to call all the shots and give you a relationship without giving you one is not worth it.

Being a conservative, I also didn't relate to her loose morals and political views. I found it hypocritical that she hated the conservative Republican for assuming all people were so and loved the liberal Democratic teacher for assuming that all people were so and it seems the author makes this statement without seeing the discrepancy. Also the almost mockery of virgins and Lee's perception that sex is an important part of high school. I went to high school in the 90s and while drinking was often a topic of conversation, I can't say that sex was, some yes, but not to this extent. There were people who were sleeping around, but it wasn't weird if you weren't and I don't think it's as common place as Sittenfeld would have us believe. Which is sad really that morality has deteriorated so much that a novel about growing up a mere ten years ago would seem unrealistic if it didn't contain rampant sex when it really doesn't need to be in there to be realistic. The virgin, the snotty beauty, the kiss-up, the jock, the black guy, the teacher who cares but is uncool, the nerd, all the characters in the book are stereotypical.

And there in lies my hate of the novel. The explicit language and descriptive sex are over the top. Several times I wondered if I should finish the novel, but I had become invested in Lee's story and wanted to know how it ended. I really didn't need for things to get raunchy, for them to push the envelope, for me to enjoy the story. I would have been alright if the sex were in there but it weren't so visual. And I could have done without the profusive use of the f word. Years from now I won't remember that the novel was well written or that I related to bits of the narrator's voice. What I will remember will be the sex and language and so for that I can't say that I'm glad I read the book.

In the end, I felt almost sad and empty in a thought-provoking way, the sort of emotion Lee felt herself at leaving the school. I personally love that sad lingering effect of a novel, but I know a lot of people don't. There are people whom I can see enjoying the book and getting into the psychology of it or even the depression of it, but I don't know many people other than myself who do get into that sort of thing. What I love about the book becomes moot. So would I recommend the novel? I can't say that I would.

Just read this book. Read the first page and this is the only advice I can give. This was the best young adult book I've ever read in my entire life, no doubt. Surely, one of the best books I've ever read. I couldn't relate to the book more. I couldn't put the book down for a second, always resting in my hands. Descriptive language and Lee's witness made me attached to the book like a link from steal. I found the book that depicts truly what I felt at high school in the most realistic way. Actually, the school life portrayed the atmosphere of 90s, I wish I had been a teenager at that time. I don't know why but the boarding school in my head is just like Hogwarts, it's not a fantasy book btw. Besides bringing gender politics, racism and social class issues up in Lee's boarding school life, I have felt I'm not the only one who sometimes just messes everything up or embarrass herself and be embarrassed of being embarrassed"(therein lies the paradox")or feel trapped inside alone when no one can truly get you unless they are you, after all, you are joking about everything easily as if that's just so normal. Lee taught me this, actually she made me realize that's totally ok. That is not the end of the world.

High school is not a teenager's biggest part of her life, and will never be. It is much smaller than we think, compared to the whole world, when you consider everything you can do. The most important thing is not the people inside you met, not the lessons, not the college application, not being popular, not the rumors or fights or the building itself. It is you that matters after all, all the things you like and want to die for, learning how to be brave to go for it(this is not about the book, it's my personal inference about high school life)

I think I am not ready to be apart from this book.