Above the Thunder/Secret Society Girl
Above the Thunder by Renee Manfredi
This book could have been about 100 pages shorter. It’s well-written and a pretty fast read, but I did have a few problems. Two of her main characters, a gay couple, are written in a fairly stereotypical fashion (drugs! AIDS! sex clubs! cheating hearts!). She also uses different points-of-view, which I usually love, but sometimes she switches so quickly that it’s confusing. The character of Flynn, Anna’s grandchild, is a bit too “wacky and precocious child” but otherwise she was a ray of light in this family of dysfunction. Also, the author relies too much on dreams for symbolism; I’m not a fan of dreams in literature, anyway. Tell me what’ s going on in their actual lives, not the time when they’re asleep. The final paragraph, about body cells and stars, is beautiful, though. My advice is to read the first 200 pages then skip to the end. Or just read the last paragraph.
Secret Society Girl: An Ivy League Novel by Diana Peterfreund
I skimmed through the advanced reader's edition of this last night (I thought it was scheduled to come out 6/27 but Amazon now has a July date). It's really not my type of book, but if you liked Prep, The Devil Wears Prada, The Nanny Diaries, etc., you'll probably enjoy this. It's about a junior journalism major at an Ivy League school (think Rory Gilmore) who gets tapped into the exclusive, all-male, possibly-rules-the-whole-world secret society, The Skulls. Just kidding, it's called The Rose & Grave. It looks like a clever book and a quick read, but again, it's just not the kind of story or characters I enjoy.