Secret Society Girl: An Ivy League Novel

Author: Diana Peterfreund

(Re-posted from my old blogger)

Prestigious Eli University is chock full of not-so-secret secret societies. Amy Haskel, junior and editor of the Lit Mag, is looking forward to being "tapped" by Quill & Ink, where all good little Lit Mag editors go, apparently. Only instead of Quill & Ink she gets tapped by Rose & Grave, a 177 year old society rumored to be akin to the Illuminati. This strikes our Amy as being more than slightly surreal. Rose & Grave are the elite, the rich and the powerful, who choose only the best and the brightest ... oh, yeah, and they're a "boy's club". So why are they interested in a girl from a middle-class background looking to become a magazine editor while secretly dreaming of writing the next Great American Novel? Amy isn't sure, but in an odd go-with-the-flow moment, she decides to accept their offer and join up. The initiation is beyond surreal, but almost instantly she begins to feel a bond with her fellow "Diggers" and is looking forward to learning all about her new brothers ... and sisters. It seems that Amy, Bugaboo to her fellow Diggers, along with 5 other women, are the first taps to include women. A revolutionary move for Rose & Grave. One that leads to some heartache for our Amy and her fellow Diggers. It seems that the board of trustees that runs the money behind Rose & Grave, made up of alumni Diggers, disagrees with the decision to tap women. Unbeknownst to the new taps, the senior class who tapped them, knowingly went against the board. Even though the seniors, being the active members, are supposed to be running things the board stages a sort of coup. They lock up the society's tomb (read: club house), cut off access to funding, and invalidate the membership of both the taps and the senior class. When they don't take it lying down, the old boys start wrecking their future careers and reputations, causing our girl Amy to lose her upcoming internship. At this point Amy's thinking it's all more trouble than it's worth. She's having problems with her room mate and her boyfriend over it and now the old boys are threatening to start wrecking her parents careers too. Will she quit Rose & Grave while she's got the chance or will she stick with it until the very possibly bitter end?

I just finished this today, so it's till pretty fresh in my mind. There were a few moments where I mentally shouted "Just shut your trap and keep it shut!" at our girl Amy during the whole initiation process. Mostly because she knew they were trying to mess with her head and yet she played right into it with all the carrying on. I just wanted her to suck it up, you know? Overall, I have to say that I liked this book. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. You see, I found her best friend secretive and annoying, her friend-with-bennies turned boyfriend, Ben, was way too good for her in the beginning and then goes all wrong when she's finally getting her act together. I found the dreaded Clarissa (Angel) much more to my liking than Amy's friend ... that's a commentary on her friend, not Clarissa ... even though she gets her shit together too when all is said and done. Demetria (Thorndike) was a little to much for me at times. She was a somewhat stereotypical "Afrocentric activist lesbian" chick with her kente cloth. The sub-plot with the spurned chick who was going to out one of the Diggers was a little weird, but I like how Amy handled it. And that's really what won me over, Amy. She wasn't the overdone sassy chick who always had something smart to say, though she did pull that off nicely in her taps interview. She was very real. She wasn't ridiculously stoic, or constantly practical. Sometimes she frustrated me with her actions and choices and sometimes she had me right there with her. She was someone that I wouldn't mind getting to know, if she were a real person, and sometimes that's more than you can say for a leading character.

Bah!

I would like to note that I'm not über fond of any of the templates for blogger, unfortunately xml is like my kryptonite. I'd have to get a dummies book just to edit my blogger template. That or do some serious searching on the interwebs for tuts, which I'm not willing to invest the time in just now. I suppose I could go back to classic, that was pretty simple to edit. Only problem with that is that I'd then have to do all new graphics, cause I wouldn't want it plain, and I'm too tired and grumpy to even think about that right now. Maybe later.

AHA!

Found the stuff I posted on my now dead blogger and will be reposting them here. They will be old, but oh, well!

Celebrate the Category

Celebrate the Category

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Acheron - Sherrilyn Kenyon

I recently finished this one and I've got to say that it is absolutely my favorite book in the entire Dark-Hunter series. I blubbered my way all through Acheron's mortal life and when he received his godly powers and I thought he'd kick some ass, disaster, thank you Artemis, strikes and he dies.

I liked his heroine a lot. She was perfect for him. I knew she's do the right thing at the conference with what Artemis gave her. I really liked that she got up in Artie's face. There could have been more of that, but I suppose it's more mature the way it was. *shrug*

I got a kick out of the Hades scene and Apollimy rocked! Raining kick ass all over the Atlantean gods. Were I her, however, her sister would have died much more slowly for what she knowingly did to little baby Apostolos, her own nephew! Slow, painful, humiliating and as degrading as possible. She'd deserved whatever she got. Maybe eternal torment instead of death? I joke with my husband about getting a t-shirt for our daughter that says "Katastrafia Megola" across the chest. Because she so totally is. This comic says it all.

Katie MacAlister

She's one of the few authors who's work I read almost all of. I say almost because I haven't read her latest Aisling Gray and I don't know if I will. I've read the first of the new silver dragons and recently picked up the second, which I'm only a few chapters into, because I liked Gabriel and I want to like this spin off. The thing is that so far it's reading pretty much like Aisling Gray. At least in the things that annoyed me about it. You think things are improving and then something else goes down wrong and the leads end up apart or the heroine ends up in deeper than before at the end of the book. Instead of feeling satisfied at the end of each book I feel like I've been left hanging and that I'm being strung along. I don't like that feeling and if it goes on too long I get turned off of a series. That's why I lost interest in Aisling.

Now you're probably thinking that this probably applies to most series, but it actually doesn't happen very often. It's the cliffhanger feel that the endings have to them that turns me off. It makes me feel like the characters are right were they were when I started the book. It's very unsatisfying. Maybe it's just that her writing style doesn't lend itself well to this style? I lover Dark Ones and her non-serials, but these dragon ones are giving me a hard time.

Am I a sucker for even trying to get into the silver dragons series?

Garwood

I'll post about individual books at a later date, but I just wanted to post about the fact that I've started reading her Buchanan books. I'm reading them in order and am currently on Murder List.

I really liked that John Paul got his own story, even though I thought it sad that Monk should come to such a pathetic end. I really wanted him to find out the truth about Jilly, take care of her himself and then disappear into the mist.

Maybe it's wrong, but I could sympathize with Monk in a way and I hated that he went out the way he did. He got played and died a fool for the love of a woman incapable of love.