S.T.A.G.S. (STAGS)

by M A Bennett

WE WERE LIARS meets THE CHOCOLATE WAR in this gripping debut YA novel set against the backdrop of a prestigious private school, a great British estate and the ever-present war of the classes.

Seventeen-year-old Greer, a scholarship girl at a prestigious private school, St Aidan the Great School (known as STAGS), soon realizes that the school is full of snobs and spoilt rich brats, many of whom come from aristocratic families who have attended the institute throughout the centuries. She's immediately ignored by her classmates. All the teachers are referred to as Friars (even the female ones), but the real driving force behind the school is a group of prefects known as the Medievals, whose leader, Henry de Warlencourt, Greer finds both strangely intriguing as well as attractive. The Medievals are all good-looking, clever and everyone wants to be among their circle of friends. Greer is therefore surprised when she receives an invitation from Henry to spend a long weekend with him and his friends at his family house in the Lake District, especially when she learns that two other "outsiders" have also been invited: Shafeen and Chanel. As the weekend unfolds, Greer comes to the chilling realization that she and two other "losers" were invited only because they were chosen to become prey in a mad game of manhunt.

• ISBN10: 0735264147
• ISBN13: 9780735264144
• Publish Date: 30 January 2018 (first published 10 August 2017)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: CA
• Publisher: Tundra Book Group
• Imprint: Penguin Teen Canada
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780735264144

Reviews

[Stephanie]

Honestly, I expected more violence. Is that weird? Yeah, that's pretty weird. So was the end.

[ccbookwitch]

When I first started reading S. T. A. G. S., all I knew about it was that it was supposed to be creepy and it was set at a boarding school, which are both easy sells for me. However, I started having my doubts about this book early on, even from the very first paragraph. You know right away that someone dies, because Greer says on page one that she is a murderer. The way the story is told is kind of as though it is a confession, because the telling is clearly being done after the events of the book take place, but there is literally no reason for this and it switches to just being a regularly-told, first-person past-tense novel sometime during either the Huntin' or Fishin' sections; I can't recall which one. The structure is only the first messy thing about this book, unfortunately.



Though I hadn't read the summary, which gives away another major plot point of the book, I quickly figured out that the "loser" of the school, nicknamed STAGS, were not being invited to the Medievals' weekend outing for fun and games. I also had a hard time believing that they would all go to the house of people who had been so mean to them. The reader is told that nobody talks to Greer, the bland main character who has no personality outside of having a bob haircut and an interest in films, for her first semester, but since that part is told and not shown, it is hard to believe she would go to the house, especially when she is warned by another student not to go. The style in which the story is told (and I do mean told; it's like a weird, creepy storytime instead of watching a story unfold naturally) just made a lot of it hard to believe, including that Greer would go to the weekend outing in the first place, as well as the weird romantic subplots.



Goodness, don't even get me STARTED on the romances. I was shocked that Greer was so gullible that she would believe Henry was interested in her when he hadn't spoken to her until the invitation, and it made me dislike her even more, since now, in addition to being excruciatingly boring, she was naive and silly, too. The second romance was slightly more believable, since Greer had had the basest of interactions with this person prior to the weekend of Shootin', Huntin', and Fishin', but it wasn't at all resolved and there was little chemistry because only the love interest had a personality.



After reading some of this book, I went back on Goodreads to see what kind of reviews it was getting, and, lo and behold, its comp title was one of my top three worst books of all time, WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart. The books do have a similar vibe in storytelling, but honestly, this book was even worse than WE WERE LIARS, and that takes a lot for me to say because I really, truly DESPISED that book. As I read, I grew more and more shocked that this book was even being published. If I had seen this during my time as an editorial intern, I would have immediately said no and probably not even bothered finishing the manuscript because the writing was so poor and the story so obvious and predictable, plus it had a terrible message about being an outsider.



Basically, I really, REALLY did not like this book. The writing was juvenile and amateur, and needed a lot more editing work. The protagonist had no personality aside from being extremely gullible, and I didn't care much about any of the other characters either. The twist of the plot made me sick to my stomach and not in a good way. This book was just all around awful and I'm honestly super surprised it is being published at all because the writing is so poor. I have also added it to my list of top worst books of all time, because it was truly that dreadful.

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: The uncertainty over whether or not the end of S.T.A.G.S. is the end of the story as it is written bothers me. Is this book it? Will there be a sequel?

While not a conventional "whodunnit" mystery novel, things still seemed fairly predictable on the surface. "Who died?" is the question. I was quite disappointed that I managed to answer that fairly early on in the book. But there's much more to the book than meets the eye and that's what really got to me.

There were parts during which I felt oddly dispassionate. Maybe that was the point because once I reached the punchline, my conflicting emotions came crashing down.