Title: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-BanksAuthor: E. Lockhart
Reading Level: 13 and up
Summary: Frankie Landau-Banks rich and intelligent finally blossoms in her sophomore year. Which means she attracts the attention of her crush Matthew and is subsequently let in to his clique of friends. Finding herself growing deeply attached to them, Frankie is upset when she finds they are keeping secrets from her and won't let her join their all male society. Setting out to prove her worth to them Frankie begins planning and putting together the greatest pranks in the history of her school.
My Review: Truthfully I picked up this book in the library because the tag on the back cover calling Frankie a near criminal mastermind intrigued me and I was in the mood for a clever story that was girl empowering. Alas this was not to be. I'm not sure why Frankie is described as a criminal mastermind. She is clever that's for sure but mastermind? Not so much. She was just overly obsessed with her boyfriend and his friends, and getting into their club. Why? Because she is overly needy and has to be with them 24/7 even though she complains she never has any alone time with her boyfriend. Not because she's asserting her independence as a smart female. A smart female wouldn't care about being excluded and being with her boyfriend 24/7. She'd go on and live her life. The only other character that made an impression on me other than Frankie was Alpha, her rival, but he was pushed into the background to make room for her boring and uninteresting boyfriend Matthew. The the other characters were so one dimensional and unemotional it's not even worth to mention their names.
The narrating of the story tried to hard to be smart. In the beginning the use of big words was cute, and I felt would encourage teens to look up these words and heck maybe even start using them in real life. The explanation of "neglected positive" was interesting, but Frankie's use of them got annoying after a while. The conversations between the "basset hounds" were not as fascinating as Frankie or the author would lead you to believe. It's just a bunch of guys spouting nonsense, which is fine in real life but not so much in books. The pacing of the novel was slow, the interesting pranks that Frankie masterminded didn't show up until near the end, and then they were skimmed over so quickly you really didn't have time to enjoy them.
I did however enjoy finding out what a panopticon was, Frankie's suicide club essay, and the mentions of P.G. Wodehouse and his books.
Content: Actually I forget if there was any language or not in this book. Some sexual innuendo.
Rating: 2 stars out of 5
Recommend: No
Definitely won't read this ;)
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