good

Oooooooh I just want to punch Darwin in the face. I also want to punch Charlie in the face because she doesn't need Darwin. I mean you're already in the best school in the world y do u feel like u have to suffer with Allie A and allie j when they're around. And Skye needs to get a grip. She needs to focus on dance instead of the Brazille boys. ANYWAY... Awesome book!!!!!!!

Enjoyed: how the Allie situation was dealt with, Charlie's plotline, Skye's plotline, the addition of a surveillance system as another obstacle to deal with when rule breaking at the academy
Disliked: this series is now halfway done and only three weeks into the school year?, both Allies are super annoying and I hate reading their plots, I wish Shira did more since her way of running the school seems to entirely rely on Charlie

this book is still fun to hate, I have a lot of opinions about what happened behind the scenes of this books publishing but this is the last good book, do with that information what you will.

I accidentally read this before I ever read the first book but it's really easy to understand the plot anyway. I didn't really like the plot and how long it took every girl to forgive a friend. I felt like they were being selfish for that reason because their friend was basically embarrassed in front of everyone. But overall it was enjoyable but i'm not surer if i'll finish the rest of the series.

Again, when you know what you're getting into, this is an awesome example of teen fluff. Fun, light read.

What an eye-opener to the lives of privileged-to-the-point-of-being-spoiled children who have had everything handed to them on a silver platter and expect everything to continue as such for the remainder of their lives. There were far too many non-age appropriate meltdowns for my liking, each one more cringeworthy than the last. Combine this with an all-girls' boarding school, explosive estrogen levels, and a short supply of eligible males, and you're in for an...interesting read.

The characters, needless to say, were a constant source of aggravation, stooping to unbelievably low levels which, realistically, would not be tolerated in a preschool, let alone a high school setting. Having been brought up, for the most part, in extremely wealthy families, they readily conveyed their excessive feelings of entitlement and subsequent frustration when their every whim was not catered to. I would not imagine that taking a group of wealthy, spoiled teenagers, placing them in close confines with one another, and establishing a set of strict rules regarding their behavior, actions, outfits, etc. generally ends well; it's more of a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one.

Furthermore, the girls' incessant fawning over their male counterparts would lead one to believe that they had been sheltered their entire lives from the existence of the male sex. I can only equate their behavior to that of the cast of Mean Girls about five years prior to the setting of the movie. Their desperation and actions themselves were abhorrent to the point of being laughable, and I had trouble keeping a straight face at the most inopportune of times. I didn't realize I would ever walk away from a book with so much cumulative secondhand embarrassment, but I guess there's always a first for everything.

While reading, I had one central question nagging at me: how in the world did thirteen and fourteen year-olds accomplish such impressive feats that had stumped countless adults before them? How were they able to run circles around the Steve Jobs, Michael Bubles, and Misty Coplands of the world? No matter how hard I tried to wrack my memory for any clues or explanations as to their unbelievable successes (and potentially even more surprising lack of public acknowledgment or approval), I always came up empty-handed. Hopefully this will be addressed in later installments, because nothing is adding up so far, and I can only envision this issue snowballing moving forward.

Above and beyond this small plot-hole, the storyline was fairly comprehensive and intriguing with several pulse-raising scenes. I was initially worried that there were would be a great deal of plot overlap with the first book in the series, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's still not clear where exactly the series is headed, but it doesn't appear that the characters haven't started wandering aimlessly yet, so I'm not overly concerned.

I was mildly disappointed by the lackluster ending that left me looking for more. There was very little resolution - no loose strings were tied up, no questions were answered. The series is written as if one book is simply a continuation of the next without any distinct introduction or conclusion for each individual component. One seamlessly picks up where the previous left off. Since these books are so short, I would have preferred a single, longer book to these shorter installments due to the absence of any significant, final chapter cliffhangers or plot twists.

Despite the overly fake characters, I'm still determined to finish the series with the hopes that there will be some sort of resolution in the final book. Both the plot and the writing style have caught and held my attention, and this was a fairly short, easy read. I'm assuming the remaining installments in the series will be fairly comparable, so my expectations aren't extremely high, but they should be entertaining reads nevertheless.

I liked this one a lot. As much as I didn't like Skye in the Clique trilogy, she's not bad here. I think it is going to be interesting what happens in the next two!

Book 17/50 (2017)