Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld


2 Stars


Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


I read the entire book. Okay, so I might have skipped huge chunks of it but I read it.

The book is about a girl that goes to a boarding school, she is shy (and quite boring), the book summary explains it. i did not pick up this book because I wanted to read about 4 years of being stuck in a boarding school, that she applied to (But changed her mind).

I thought it was going to be about a girl who climbs her way up the social ladder, makes lot's of friends, generally has a good experience and maybe meets a guy. Boy was I wrong. The main character grew in almost no way. She was winey and spent most of the book complaining about her life, which after the first 100 pages got really annoying. I was mentally screaming at her to go talk to someone, which she obviously could, as the author shows in small snippets. Oh and she also worships a total dick (Not even good supporting characters).

Overall, I really don't think this book is worth reading. It left me unsatisfied, and it wasted an entire saturday. So, just don't bother.