Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart


This is one of those boarding school books I loved as a teen,
with a new twist. Frankie gets the hot guy as her boyfriend,
but instead of losing herself, she actually finds herself. There's a
lot of intrigue, too, because there's a secret society and a mystery to solve.
All in all, I give it a thumbs up! Very enjoyable read from E. Lockhart.

5 comments:

Katie said...

Loved this book! Frankie was a tough character and I appreciated her self-awareness and growing maturity. Do you think there will be a sequel? My only problem was that the ending left me with that "to be continued" sense. Still high YAY for me!

Deb Motley said...

I wanted to love this book, but didn't so much. I didn't like Frankie. I admired her toughness but her personality left me thinking that she was a royal pain in the...neck. A mild thumb's down for me.

Josh B. said...

I just finished this book last night and I thought it was pretty good. I agree that Frankies personality kinda bugged me, but I still enjoyed the book. I would give it a YAY simply because i think teens would really enjoy reading it, and I like the writing style, but not the most enthusiastic YAY.

Allison said...

I'm not sure if I liked Frankie either. I wanted to but I didn't completely understand the depth of her anger at the end. I thought her pulling the strings of the Bassetts the best part of the story. I loved that part. I'll vote maybe for now.

Iris said...

This book struck a rather painful chord for me. While it was funny and smart, it was also pretty damn depressing.

The book speaks rather truthfully to the problems that erupt when a girl, a social outsider no less, wants to be respected as a boy would be in the pressure cooker status-focused world of a prep school. I may not have gone to prep school, but I can readily attest to feeling the biting sting of never quite meeting the qualifications for the boys' club in grade school. Damn boobs!

The Jeeves and Wooster allusions were brilliant.. is it not the low key butler Jeeves who orchestrates all of Bertie's escapes? Frankie sadly misses that in her reading of the books. She is soooo focused on the dreamy world of Wooster and his cronies, and this of course makes her a less than pleasant heroine. She is selfish, dishonest, needy and ultimately tragic.
Yay.