Book Review: The Exclusives by Rebecca Thornton

The Exclusives by Rebecca Thornton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher: twenty7


Summary:  1996. Freya Seymour and Josephine Grey are invincible - beautiful and brilliant, the two best friends are on the cusp of Oxbridge, and the success they always dreamed they'd share.

2014. Josephine hasn't heard from Freya for eighteen long and tortured years. And then Freya gets in touch, wanting to meet.

Beginning with one ill-fated night, The Exclusives charts the agonising spiral of friendship gone wrong, the heartache and betrayal of letting down those closest to you and the poisonous possibilities of what we wouldn't do when everything we prize is placed under threat. 

Book Review: Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll

Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster
Summary: HER PERFECT LIFE
IS A PERFECT LIE.

As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close to living the perfect life she’s worked so hard to achieve.

But Ani has a secret.

Book Review: Academy Girls by Nora Carroll

Academy Girls by Nora Carroll
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher:  Lake Union Publishing


Summary: Jane Milton—divorced and deeply in debt—has reluctantly returned to the remote boarding school of her youth, this time to teach, but the long-buried secrets of her past will not be easy to escape.

During their senior year, Jane and her friends Kat and Lissa obsessed over their English teacher, Miss Pymstead, convinced of her involvement in an unsolved murder. As the obsession escalated, it took a tragic turn. The only record of their misdeeds was a secret manuscript that disappeared without a trace—until the story resurfaces in an assignment turned in by Jane’s least favorite student.

Jane scrambles to unravel the mysteries, but can she keep her own secrets buried as she unearths even darker, long-hidden truths?

Book Review: Bradstreet Gate by Robin Kirman

Bradstreet Gate: A Novel by Robin Kirman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher:  Crown


Summary:   Georgia, Charlie and Alice each arrive at Harvard with hopeful visions of what the future will hold. But when, just before graduation, a classmate is found murdered on campus, they find themselves facing a cruel and unanticipated new reality. Moreover, a charismatic professor who has loomed large in their lives is suspected of the crime. Though his guilt or innocence remains uncertain, the unsettling questions raised by the case force the three friends to take a deeper look at their tangled relationship. Their bond has been defined by the secrets they’ve kept from one another—Charlie’s love and Alice’s envy, Georgia’s mysterious affair—and over the course of the next decade, as they grapple with the challenges of adulthood and witness the unraveling of a teacher's once-charmed life, they must reckon with their own deceits and shortcomings, each desperately in search of answers and the chance to be forgiven.

Book Review: Those Girls by Lauren Saft

Those Girls by Lauren Saft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher:  Poppy


Summary:   Junior year, the suburbs of Philadelphia. Alex, Mollie and Veronica are those girls: they're the best of friends and the party girls of the school. But how well does everybody know them--and really, how well do they know one another? Alex is secretly in love with the boy next door and has joined a band--without telling anyone. Mollie suffers from a popular (and possibly sociopathic) boyfriend, as well as a serious mean streak. And Veronica just wants to be loved--literally, figuratively, physically....she's not particular. Will this be the year that bonds them forever....or tears them apart for good? 

Lauren Saft masterfully conveys what goes on in the mind of a teenage girl, and her debut novel is raw, honest, hilarious, and thought-provoking, with a healthy dose of heart.

Book Review: Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford

Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher: St. Martin's Press


Summary:   It's 2006 in the Manhattan of the young and glamorous. Money and class are colliding in a city that is about to go over a financial precipice and take much of the country with it. At 26, bright, funny and socially anxious Evelyn Beegan is determined to carve her own path in life and free herself from the influence of her social-climbing mother, who propelled her through prep school and onto the Upper East Side. Evelyn has long felt like an outsider to her privileged peers, but when she gets a job at a social network aimed at the elite, she's forced to embrace them.

Recruiting new members for the site, Evelyn steps into a promised land of Adirondack camps, Newport cottages and Southampton clubs thick with socialites and Wall Streeters. Despite herself, Evelyn finds the lure of belonging intoxicating, and starts trying to pass as old money herself. When her father, a crusading class-action lawyer, is indicted for bribery, Evelyn must contend with her own family's downfall as she keeps up appearances in her new life, grasping with increasing desperation as the ground underneath her begins to give way.

Book Review: Charlie, Presumed Dead by Anne Heltzel

Charlie, Presumed Dead by Anne Heltzel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers


Summary:  In Paris, family and friends gather to mourn the tragic passing of Charlie Price—young, handsome, charming, a world-traveler—who is presumed dead after an explosion. Authorities find only a bloodied jacket, ID’d as Charlie’s. At the funeral, two teens who are perfect strangers, Lena Whitney and Aubrey Boroughs, make another shocking discovery: they have both been dating Charlie, both think Charlie loved them and them alone, and there is a lot they didn’t know about their boyfriend. Over the next week, a mind-bending trip unfolds: first in London—then in Mumbai, Kerala, and Bangkok, the girls go in search of Charlie. Is he still alive? What did their love for him even mean? The truth is out there, but soon it becomes clear that the girls are harboring secrets of their own.