Meet Anne Dowling - a fresh, original, and funny new YA heroine whose knowing, irreverent voice will remind readers of Pretty Little Liars and Private. Anne practically runs her exclusive prep school on New York's Upper East Side - that is, until she burns part of it down. Accidentally. Her lawyer father decides to send his not-quite-so-innocent only daughter to a prestigious boarding school outside of Boston. Determined to reform her bad girl ways and make it back to New York, making friends at the Wheatley School is the last thing Anne cares about. There is one girl Anne is able to stand, though - her roommate Isabella. That is, until Isabella's body is found in the woods behind the school. Anne is convinced someone knows what happened to Isabella the night she was viciously murdered - but no one is talking. That's when Anne starts to notice how old and creepy the Wheatley School really is. When she meets Isabella's twin brother and learns he also thinks the school might be covering up the truth about Isabella's death, Anne can't help it...she starts poking around.
Utilizing her lock-picking skills, unmistakable charm, and the help of a cute classmate named Brent, Anne discovers that Isabella wasn't quite the innocent nerdy girl she pretended to be. But someone will do anything to stop Anne's snooping around in this fast-paced, unputdownable read - even if it means framing her for Isabella's murder.
When I was younger, I used to read a lot of murder mysteries with female protagonists. I read one book after the other. Sadly, I don't remember the authors or the titles but I do know where they used to reside on the library shelves. As it is, most of the books published in the late 1990s and early 2000s have mostly been taken from those shelves, so I'll probably never know again which books I read. But there is one thing I do remember: all those clichés! It's no wonder that after two or three dozen, I was done with them.
Prep School Confidential, I figured, would satisfy that nostalgic need for fluffy teen murder mysteries, after which I would just chuck it aside and move on. That is not the case. I am not moving on. I picked up the second book and plan to read it this month. All the clichés I remember from the murder mysteries I used to read can be found in Prep School Confidential but they were so much more than that. Taylor took all the good good elements of a whodunnit novel and added layers of depth and developed the characters throughout the books.
I was easily sucked into the book, although I was afraid at first that this book would be simply a cross between Gossip Girl and mystery or something. The first couple of chapters featured spoilt rich kids, and I was all ready to bet against myself that I wouldn't even finish the book. Turns out I not only finished reading the book, I finished liking it very much.
The characters were diverse, the protagonist's voice was relatable, there were plot twists and yet it still managed to be the light book I was hoping for when I started reading. I wanted a quick read and I got. Albeit not because it was fluffy but rather because I couldn't put the book down and kept flipping the pages to see what would happen next.
