Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Author: E. Lockhart
Publisher: Hyperion
Release Date: March 25, 2008
Date Read: February 24 - March 9, 2011
Rating: 4/5 stars
Goodreads

Summary
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: Debate Club. Her father's "bunny rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks. No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer. Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew's lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16: Possibly a criminal mastermind.

This is the story of how she got that way.


Review
Wow! What an amazing read! This was originally recommended to me by a friend in my book club last year and I've just gotten around to reading it now. I can't believe I waited this long to read it. One of my favourite parts of the novel was the social commentary on pranking, the panopticon, teenage behaviour, etc. The entire novel read more like a character development essay rather than a work of fiction, which definitely sets it apart from most other young adult fiction I've read. I found all of the characters to be unbelievably realistic, and while the situations Frankie found herself in were at times a little unpredictable, I'm sure they regularly occur at boarding schools. I loved how the novel was about more than love, friendship, loyalty, responsibility, social status, but more about law vs. order and human behaviour at a teenage level. I liked how E. Lockhart spent almost 3/4 of the novel establishing characters and scenarios before introducing the problem and climax. As a result I was on the edge of my seat (quite literally) for a majority of the novel. What an amazing read! 

Favourite Quote: Anything Frankie said as an imaginary neglected positive. i.e. "The guy is completely macculate" or "I dulge that. My underwear is not going out on loan."

Recommended: The Boyfriend List (E. Lockhart), Hacking Harvard (Robin Hasserman), Looking for Alaska (John Green), What I Saw and How I Lied (Judy Blundell), Breathless (Jessica Warman)

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