Boarding School Girls

Gr 10 Up—Like Anna Godbersen's "Luxe" series (HarperCollins), this contemporary prequel to Stella (St. Martin's, 2014) starts with a prologue that is the equivalent of reading the last page of a mystery, followed by the series of events that leads up to the leading lady's demise. In this case, Siena Hamilton is the consummate rich girl who has "people" (peers who have been initiated as Starlets by Siena and her mother) who handle all of her day-to-day details. Slowly, but surely, Siena finds herself an onlooker in her own life, except for when she's having sex with her boyfriend, Jack. He is the stereotypical wealthy jock with an absentee father and a mother who is perpetually attempting suicide in an effort to win back her husband's affection. Romy, a former Starlet just returned from France, is the fly in the ointment and is the perfect foil to the mean girl circle of Starlets that orbit Siena. Readers receive snippets of story sufficient to cobble together that Romy was invited to become a Starlet but was expelled from the group for reasons that are somewhat nebulous. As Siena watches her desired engagement to Jack implode and her lovelier younger sisters replace her in her mother's affections, she begins losing her will to live. Siena and her Starlets are an emotional train wreck that will build an automatic readership for the previous volume, and provide a good backstory for Stella Hamilton's mean girl proclivities.