Could not finish. ( )

Just finished this book last night. I felt the characters were scarily real, and the plot, though it did drag on in some parts, was overall solid. It took a while to ease into the style. It was written in first person, and while I have read ALOT of first person novels, this felt a little different, which was nice, but it took a good 50 pages or so to really get the feel of the style. Lee's infatuation with Cross Sugarman was so deliciously described, and possibly the part of the book I enjoyed the most. I felt for her, but even though she made him out to be a bit of an a**hole, he didn't really turn out to be in the end. One of things I didn't like about the book was how Lee would randomly start discussing her life after Ault School while in the middle of something sort of important that was happening. Some parts were a little too nostalgic, and didn't flow quite as good as it could have.

Overall, it was an engaging read. It was long, perhaps a bit too long, but Lee Fiora was an amazingly real character whom I could see myself in, and even though, overall, she did seem a little pathetic in the end, it was still a worthwhile read :D
3 1/2 stars! ( )

This didn't make much of an impression on me, a month later I can barely remember it. Lee gets a scholarship to a fancy boarding school, and spends the next few years there observing the lives of the rich students. This is retold from her slightly older voice, and the events have a tinge of nostalgia rather than drama. ( )

In “Prep” by Curtis Sittenfeld, Lee Fiora is from a lower middle class family in the Midwest who goes to the prestigious Auit prep school in Massachusetts on a scholarship. This novel talks about her memories of her four years there. While at Ault, as time passes, she slowly goes from being at the bottom of the social ladder to eventually gaining a few friends and tries to make a place for herself in this social society as well as please her parents. Lee Fiora has to overcome obstacles she would never have experienced back home. Prep is a great book to read becomes it gives a better understanding about the “universal pains” and “ thrills of adolescence” in a female high school. TJ


When Lee Fiora, a 14 year old girl from Indiana gets accepted to a New England prep school, Ault, she is thrown into a world nothing like her own. She is sent there on a scholarship, and with very high expectations from her parents, especially her father. Prep, follows Lee’s next four years at Ault, and her struggle to find herself, to please her parents, create friendships with her peers and a relationship with her crush, and to pass her geometry exam. This novel is a time machine, bringing you back to the adolescent years of high school and the struggle to be accepted. KJ

In Prep, Lee Fiora is from a close nit family in the Midwest who has a scholarship to a prep high school in Massachusetts. This book is the story of her four years at school. She is an outcast immediately when she arrives at school and no matter what she does or how hard she tries to fit in she can’t. She eventually befriends two other girls in her grade. She also has a secret relationship with Cross, the big man on campus. She struggles to fit in with the wealthy children as she is not as privileged back at home. This story is a brilliant story of a teenage life in high school that many readers can truly relate to and is right on in description of isolation of a teenage girl. JU

So, another coming-of-age novel, but this one is so well done that you wonder how the author makes it look so easy. Lee Fiora, scholarship student at Ault boarding school in Massachusetts, tries to please everyone, including boys, while consciously hiding who she is and denying her own observations. Shortly before graduation, a reporter interviews Lee for an article on boarding schools, and Lee, after being untrue to herself for four years, tells her the negatives. The reader's heart bleeds for Lee as she does everything wrong. ( )