Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Feb 04, 2009

Joe rated it:

I always say that if a writer can evoke complete hatred and dislike for their protagonist from me, then they must be a good writer (Lucinda Rosenfeld's What She Saw... comes to mind). In that regard, Curtis Sittenfeld is an excellent writer (perhaps it's a last name thing) but Prep sucks.

Two reasons why I hated Prep:
1) NOTHING happens. I don't mind episodic novels in which each chapter is a tiny event that comes together as a whole (Peter Darbyshire's Please is an excellent e More...

13 comments like (65 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Anna rated it:

Having attended a prep school myself, I found the descriptions of prep school logistically were fairly accurate. It was a strange flashback into life with boarding students and the activities/events that surround going to an elite private school that focuses greatly on matriculation into Ivy Leagues.
Despite the vague nostalgia that I felt at times, the protagonist was extremely hard to identify with, although she did have characteristics that could have made her more sympathetic. What I b More...

5 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2007

Kirk rated it:

I recently read this for an encyclopedia entry I was writing on post-2000 coming-of-age novels, so my assessment, I fear, isn't really fair. On the one hand, I think Sittenfeld is a very talented writer, but on the other, I kept wanting to say GTFU (you know, grow the *#^$ up), which seems very, very ungenerous of me. In the end, I can appreciate what attracted people to this book, making it a surprise success. That doesn't mean the book sticks with me or changed my life in any drastic way---and More...

9 comments like (13 people liked it)

Oct 24, 2010

Lea rated it:

I loathed this book, really really hated it. I kept reading, hoping for the moment when the narrator would stop complaining, stop blaming everyone else for her misery, but the moment never came. She finished high school, went on with her life, and yet KEPT COMPLAINING about boarding school. It is easy to take pot shots at New England boarding schools, and at high school in general, but this book lacks any humor and the narrator lacks any self-awareness. I don't know that I would have liked this More...

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Apr 08, 2008

Jessica rated it:

this book was a complicated one for me. if i could, i'd probably give it a 2 slash 3 for its rating. the best way i can describe it is this: you know when you meet someone and after talking for a little while you start to think, wow, this person is JUST like me, we're totally on the same wavelength! and then each meeting after that you continue to have the same impression UNTIL they say or do something so foreign to your personality that it makes you realize you are NOTHING alike. to the poi More...

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2008

Sarah rated it:

Well...
This book isn't getting five stars because I thought it was a literary masterpiece. It's getting them because it's the first boarding school narrative I've read (ever) that is indicative of the actual experience, or at least my actual experience. Other books (fiction) on the subject, such as Black Ice or Oh the Glory of it All, tend to stick to one of two slants: 1) the narrator is from a poor family, gets a scholarship, and his/her has a wonderful life from boarding school on, fill More...

0 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2010

Spider rated it:

Worst book I've read in recent memory. It inspires in me a feeling I imagine to be familiar to those who have ever seized a pitchfork or a flaming torch and set off to terrorize a neighbor.

I've never read anything with a more loathesome, spineless, vacuous, sad-sack main character. Every single time (EVERY SINGLE TIME) Lee is on the precipice of learning something or connecting to someone or growing as a human being in any conceivable way, she slumps her shoulders and sabotages h More...

4 comments like (16 people liked it)

Aug 19, 2010

Raquel rated it:

You know, I started out really liking this book. I thought the writing was good, and I found myself really relating to the protagonist as I used to have many of the same tendencies (not really involving myself in things and instead just hanging out on the fringes of life). But then about halfway through, the book just turned craptastic. Of course the craptastickness involved a boy. It always does. But it just ruined the book for me. It made me just not like Lee, the main character, at all. She t More...

4 comments like (9 people liked it)

May 30, 2007

stephanie rated it:

i hated the main character after the first chapter, and really could have cared less what happened to her. i have a hard time liking books where i can't find redeeming qualities in the characters i'm supposed to care about. also, i agree with the author's parents that the last chapter should have been cut. i might have liked it better then.

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 30, 2008

Maggie rated it:

Lee Fiora is an average, middle class girl who feels like she is meant for far greater things than her Indiana hometown. Convincing herself that trading her Midwest family in for a fancy East Coast prep school is the answer, Lee becomes a scholarship student at the wealthy and prestigious Ault School, where she quickly learns that gaining admission isn't the same as gaining acceptance. Prep chronicles Lee's four years at Ault, starting out as an insecure and lonely freshmen, leaving as a love- More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2010

Charity rated it:

Again, I was shocked by the reviews after hopping on Goodreads. Only this time, I loved it and yet, there were so many haters. Can't a girl get a break? Am I forever doomed to be the outsider? Okay, a little overly dramatic, to be sure. There are MANY more who seemed to have enjoyed it than despised it, but the haters were hanging out at the top of the reviews, so that made it seem worse than the reality.

Yes, I loved Prep...shoot me. I always wanted to go to boarding school. I, in fa More...

7 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 11, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

Reviewed by Amanda Dissinger for TeensReadToo.com

Walking through the typical young adult section of a bookstore, there are usually five, maybe even ten, books about a teenage girl, perhaps from a small town, who transfers from that wee little town to a prep school.

Typically, this prep school is in Connecticut, or Massachusetts. Typically, the girl starts out struggling, tries to fit in with the popular crowd, misses her hometown, faces many moral problems, and meets a ha More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2008

Lesley rated it:

This book kept me entertained enough during my six hour delay at Logan despite the somewhat tedious subject matter (life for an "outsider" at a New England prep school). The characters in this book have names like Cross, Darden, Horton, Aspeth, Gates, and McGrath. I would have thought this was the author poking fun at the absurd names disgustingly wealthy people give their children (I'm sorry but doesn't naming your daughter Horton pretty much guarantee she'll become a coke-addled slut More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2007

Anna rated it:

This book makes me want to shout at its critics, "you don't have to identify with the protagonist to like the book!--identification isn't the only reason to read!". But then I want to defend it precisely because it seems so "real." I.e., I identify with it.

Now I say "defend" because the book is marketed as chick-lit (I don't care how much reputable praise you list on the back cover; when there's a pink and green belt cinching your book, you're chick- More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2007

Christine rated it:

the book that traumatized me for the weekend: Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Ms. Sittenfeld writes very well, maybe too well- I have to say, she did a fine job planting the image of the drama in my mind, but now it's burned too well, and since the images/ideas aren't exactly the sort I want to keep in my head, I wish I didn't have to remember it. The main character isn't my favorite person, but the reader is still compelled to understand her.

The freaky points are: a) I used to want to go More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Michele rated it:

A for Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangst
Prep, a story told by the talented Curtis Sittenfeld, was hard to put down. The narrator, Lee Fiora, an unremarkable girl from South Bend, Indiana, does a remarkable thing. At 13 she decides to apply to East Coast Prep schools and winds up spending an angst-ridden four years at Ault School just outside of Boston, Mass.

("How was I supposed to understand, when I applied at the age of thirteen, that you have your whole life to leave your family?" More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Megan rated it:

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I thought it would be a run-of-the-mill story about another New England boarding school, like so many Hollywood movies are fashioned after. And while, at times, it was (the typical blond beauty, the jock the insecure girl lusts after, the closet lesbian), what I found different about this book was how everything DIDN'T end up all neatly wrapped in a bow.

The main character, Lee Fiora, didn't find the answers to all her questions by the More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 13, 2007

Tara rated it:

It had all the makings of something I'd love: wealthy, elitist prep school kids. But I could not stand the main character. I don't think I've ever read a book where I hated the main character so much and gave less of a crap what happened to her. No, wait. I did not hate her. That is far too strong a word. She wasn't nearly interesting enough to hate. She was just very, very irritating. Plot....? What plot?

If I remember correctly, the story is loosely based on the author's own experi More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 20, 2009

Melissa rated it:

**Imagine you were sent to a school hundreds of miles away from your home and you were all alone. That’s the beginning of Prep, a poignant novel written into the perspective of an over analytical high school student, Lee Fiora. This is the story of everything that goes on inside her head while going to the prestigious and wealthy Ault school. This is a realistic novel because Lee is alone for the first time, she shows that high school is not just an educational institute, but also a place filled More...

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 15, 2010

Melea rated it:

This book is on my nerves. I'm going to give it my best and try to finish the last 150 or so pages but I may tear each page out one at a time and burn it as I read it.

011510. Finally finished!!! This one almost made it to my "couldn't finish" list but I made it!

Lee has zero growth throughout the entire book until the last 50 pages, when she actually becomes interesting only because she becomes controversial.

I know it's wrong to judge a book by its c More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 02, 2012

Brian rated it:

I like to think that while I'm well removed from high school at this point, I can still remember vividly the feelings of insecurity and loneliness, contrasted with those of the sometimes triumphs, that that particular institution has a tendency to engender. And because of this, I can very much sympathize with the narrator of Prep, Lee Fiora. But while I was certainly prone to the same insecurities that Lee experienced, her character takes them to an extraordinary level that I sincerely hope most More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 23, 2008

Caroline rated it:

To be blunt: Lee Fiora, the protagonist, is boring. Really boring.

She has some beautiful observations about life, but that's literally all she does -- observe. I realize that's the point, that Lee is someone who intentionally sets herself apart because she doesn't think she could fit in, but the end result is that she's just pure vanilla. If the book weren't generally very well-written, this would be much more evident. Lee is supposed to be caustic and witty, but that's only evid More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 08, 2008

Bookworm rated it:

I give this book 5 stars because it is on the top of the list of books i've read this year. I wouldnt exactly call it amazing....but, I enjoyed it A LOT.

Our main character is an odd one. I'd say she's slightly schizophrenic, overly paranoid, extremely insightful and an intense observer of the world around her.

The thing is, no matter how strange she is...she is an entirely relatable character. I enjoyed her insight, because it brought me back to my own teen years.
More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 25, 2008

Misa rated it:

Let me first admit that "Prep" was far from perfect. I’m not sure I could argue against many of the bad reviews. At times, I longed for the novel to hurry along. The foreshadowing was clunky. Occasionally I was so bored I wasn't sure I could get through the entire novel.

And then (heavy sigh), Sittenfeld did what I hadn’t imagined anyone could do. She made me relive the most painful experiences of high school with such honesty that it was hard to believe that she wrote More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2008

Renee rated it:

I liked this book as much as I thought I would, I suppose. I wasn't expecting too much. At parts, probably because I'm in high school right now, I can really relate to Lee's observations about her school, friends, etc. On the other hand, sometimes she just starts to get frustrating. She is so detached from everything and everyone (even her "friends") and I wanted her to find some sort of happiness by the end of her years at Ault School.

(SPOILERS!!!)

For a while More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 21, 2008

Jenny rated it:

after re-reading 7.08:

Sittenfeld is a genius. The voice of Lee Fiora is so poignant and so real — she is so screwed up, but Sittenfeld shows this to us perfectly, in small bites, with a background (and the perfect characters for foils) that out her screwed-up-ness crisply and in heartbreaking detail. Lee speaks from a gorgeously flawed teenage place — somewhere intensely familiar, somewhere achingly wrong about so many things — and her foibles translate so well for me. This reread (n More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2007

Meghan rated it:

i actually read this two years ago, maybe a little more than that and saw that there was a new book from the author. so i decided to re-read Prep as i truly loved it the first time i read it.

i loved everything about this book, even when the main character was frustrating. the author really tapped into not just how adolescents behave but more into the inner workings, the insecurities, frustrations, and absolute oblivious narcissim. the book focuses on a midwest girl who decideds to More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2008

Lani rated it:

I read this book awhile ago during the downward slope of its book club popularity. I don't think I would normally have picked it up, nor is the subject matter particularly interesting to me. But the cover is striking and I had heard people mention it as an enjoyable read.

Chicklit is chicklit, but this does do a reasonably good job of showing a unique situation. I don't know anything about boarding school, but most girls can relate to the coming of age story of a high school girl and More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 17, 2007

Sherrie rated it:

The 2nd book of the year by Ms. Sittenfield. (Yes, Curtis is a female). I liked this one MUCH better (see Book No. 31). A midwest girl, Lee Fiora who has won a scholarship, finds herself at an elite boarding school near Boston. It deals with coming of age and class distinctions. It has all the usual characters…the popular pretty girls, the handsome jocks, the gay best friend. With all that, I can see myself staying far away from this book…(I HATE all those 80 movies about cry-ass white tee More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 30, 2007

Lyndsey rated it:

I was surprised by this book, it was not at all what I expected. I thought that I would recognize a lot of girls I have known in the main character, but that was not the case at all. It was definitely an entertaining read, as far as her exploits throughout school. The author touched on important issues that everyone should be able to identify with, like forming relationships as an adolescent and finding a way to connect to people different from yourself, along with some class/status issues. O More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)