Carmen Reid

Let's face it, this series does not improve with reading. We're putting up with it, and reading it anyway - but only because there's not much else being published these days in any sort of traditional boarding school setting. This is re-hashed crap.

Girls who are best mates but spend all their time arguing: about boys, families, other girls, clothes, shops, anything! Who really needs to know that many details of everyone's clothes? Standard new girl plot, lots of stereotypes about Americans, lack of understanding of small details.

What have we done to make 21st century fiction, in the areas that had quality in the 20th century, have fallen so far? The sad thing is, I wasted my time on this book and finished it - because I want so much to like it. I want there to be straight school stories without other elements (ie. fantasy) more recent than the Trebizon series (1980s) that I enjoy. But there just aren't. Sigh.… (mer)