Finished Secret Society Girl by Diana Peterfreund. I wouldn’t exactly classify this as a YA novel, but it’s not really romance either. Collegiate lit? Chick lit?

Amy Haskell is a typical junior at Eli University, editing the college’s lit magazine and wondering whether she wants to have a real relationship with her “friend with benefits” Brandon.

Then, Amy gets “tapped” or chosen to join Rose & Grave, the most elite secret society at Eli. And her whole life changes. Suddenly, all the cool, rich kids on campus are her friends, and she’s riding around in limos and drinking champagne.

At least until the older members of the society decide to shut Rose & Grave down. Seems the old, white guys don’t think women should be allowed into their club. Sexist pigs! 👿

But Amy, with the help of her new friends, manages to change their minds — or at least circumvent their scheming.

A prestigious, Ivy League-type college that has a plethora of secret societies isn’t a world I’m familiar with, since I attended a Southern university where most of the students were commuters (including moi). But hey, that’s why we read books, right? To get transported to other worlds.

I enjoyed a lot of things about SSG. The college atmosphere was nicely done, as was Amy’s worry about how her new “status” would affect her relationship with her best friend. Amy was a smart, believable character who wasn’t afraid to stand up to people who had a lot more power than she did.

The only thing I didn’t like about Amy was the way she treated Brandon. The nicest, sweetest guy in the world, and she messes up their relationship. I know Amy has her issues, but I wanted to reach into the book, take her by the shoulders, and say “What the heck are you doing?” Then again, most of us don’t know a good thing when we see it.

(And I wanted to know Poe’s real name. If it was in the book, I missed it.)

Anyway, thumbs up.

BTW, the second book in the series, Under the Rose, was just released. Got to help a fellow Chick-Lit writer out. 😀

Up next: The Devil in the Junior League by Linda Francis Lee.

What about you? What are you reading this summer? Inquiring minds want to know …

Finished Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. Fangirls and fanboys know Gaiman as the author of the Sandman graphic novel series and American Gods, among other things.

Fragile Things is a book of literary, fantasy short stories Gaiman has written over the years, with a few poems thrown in for flavor. There’s a little bit of everything in the book. October in the Chair imagines the months of the year as people telling tall tales around a fire. A Study in Emerald is sort of a Sherlock Holmes story in reverse.

Most of the stories are pretty dark and bleak though, like Keepsakes and Treasures, in which a mob-like enforcer talks about killing people and doing other unsavory things for his employer. 

Perhaps the most disturbing story for me was The Problem with Susan, which imagines what happened to Susan in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books (she’s the sister who didn’t die and go back to Narnia aka heaven with the other kids). I will never think about Narnia the same way again (A note to my friend Amy: you probably don’t want to read this story. It is that icky at the end).

If you’re looking for easy resolutions and tidy endings, Gaiman is not the guy to read. Most of the stories are ambiguous, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions about what happens next. Still, the stories made me think and made me interested in reading more of Gaiman’s work. (My significant other has been pestering me to read American Gods for months now).

So, thumbs up.

Another note: To Sam of the Ten Thousand Things, if you haven’t read Gaiman yet (although you probably have), you should read this book. It is the kind of thing you would love, and it reminded me of several things we read back in AP English.

Up next: Secret Society Girl by Diana Peterfreund.