Okay, okay, wait for it....
I read Prep. I wasn't going to; I'd flirted with checking it out of the library a couple of times before the Sittenfeld/Wiener flap, but after that, I decided no, it wasn't worth it. But then, when I went Thursday (after the non-interview debacle), it was just sitting on the new fiction rack, waiting for me. Isn't it better for me to hate the book having read it? The answer is yes.
And I did hate it. Okay, maybe that's unfair. I certainly didn't love it. In fact, I don't see what the fuss is about; I honestly can't imagine why it's marketed as simple fiction. It's not necessarily chick lit, though it has a LOT in common with proclaimed chick lit. I think that Prep is absolutely, 100% Young Adult. It's about a high schooler, and it's about a shallow high schooler at that. So what if she goes to prep school? That doesn't make it any more adult. The defining moment of the book, to me, happened in the last 50 pages of an over 350-page book. The first 250 pages or so were pointless; the characters weren't especially well-written or deep. The relationships (or lack thereof) were so cliche. The important moments were mere footnotes in the book--when the main character betrays her first sorta friend, every shared moment between the two best girlfriends in the book, the moment when hte girl betrays the entire school--and I absolutely wondered why.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that the book was very poorly crafted. The most important part of the book--the part the author really dwells on--is the girls' obsession with a popular boy named Cross, who ends up using her basically for sex. It felt lame and contrived, especially because of the end of the book: the main character has a revelation at the end of the four years at prep school that "Oh my gosh! Prep school isn't really that important! It's not the real world!" Perhaps it's apropos to say that all the important themes of the book felt juvenile to me; if this book had been marketed to teens, I would understand it better. (Not that I would have liked it better, you understand. It wasn't particularly well-done; I've read other YA books that better deal with topics like popularity and being used.)
I really did go into the book thinking it might be good; even though I bear a (slight) grudge against the author, I thought that anything that got so much buzz might warrant the buzz. I fought my dislike through the entire book; had it not been so much of an experiment for me to read it, I most likely would not have finished it. Very disappointing.
But I think that I would love to hear other opinions. Have you read the book and loved it? Why? I'm just curious.
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