I forced myself to finish this book. Meh. I'm not a fan.

Good book, and definitely very well written. But I personally found it impossible to relate to the main character, and actively disliked her, so that made me feel less invested in the story.

I loved eligible, one of my favorite books ever……and I just felt a bit underwhelmed by this!

Lee Fiora needs a good talking to, and perhaps therapy, although neither would save this downer of a book.

Lee Fiora is a smart girl from Indiana who decides to leave the Heartland to journey to the mysterious, elite world of Ault School in Massachusetts. Her dreams of entering the ranks of her rich peers never quite come to fruition, and Lee is often waiting on the sidelines for her life to come together, and it never quite does. Prep is a leisurely-paced novel that revolves around the internal life of Lee, which can be both fascinating and frustrating. At 400 pages, this detailed account of Lee's 4 years at Ault makes the reader feel like they have truly joined her in her high school experience. We are with her as she struggles to make friends, feels hopelessly alienated, stumbles through awkward and casual sex experiences, and grapples with being an invisible outsider on scholarship in a land of the truly wealthy.

Appeals: Character-driven, frustratingly real protagonist, rich with detail. Elements of romance and friendship, but ultimately balanced in a way that mirrors the loneliness and unhappiness many people feel during adolescence.

This book shares the alienation of Holden in Catcher in the Rye, the strange solitude and pointlessness of life felt by the main character of The Bell Jar, and the solitude and internal struggle of the main character in Speak (by Laurie Halse Anderson).

This was a re-read, after it affected Courtney so much. I had read it 6 years or so ago, and think I had the same reaction this time. A good story, related to some of it, but it didn't throw me into a tail spin of insecurity. Lee caused many of her own problems...

I LOVED this book. It’s a coming of age story with a setting that many readers will be unable to relate to (an east coast prep school) but feelings that will resonate (the anxiety and self-consciousness of being a teenager, the pain and naïveté of first love, being an outsider but desperately wanting to fit in). What I enjoyed most is that while the plot is the story of a teenager, the narration is that of an adult looking back, which adds a depth that I highly appreciated. This novel may not be for everyone (see the 1 and 2 star reviews) but it really worked for me.

Lee is an awful protagonist, full of flaws and none of the good ones.