Sorority: My Review

Sorority

About the Book:

Prep meets Girls in White Dresses in Genevieve Sly Crane’s deliciously addictive, compulsively readable exploration of female friendship and coming of age that will appeal to anyone who has ever been curious about what goes on in a sorority house…

Margot is dead.

There’s a rumor she died because she couldn’t take the pressure of being a pledge. You may not ask what happened to her. It’s not your business. But it wasn’t a suicide, if you’re wondering.

Spring Fling will not be cancelled. The deposit is non-refundable. And Margot would have wanted the sisterhood to continue in her absence, if only to protect her sisters’ secrets: Shannon is the thinnest girl in the house (the other sisters hate her for it, but they know her sacrifice: she only uses the bathroom by the laundry room); Kyra has slept with twenty-nine boys since she started college (they are all different and all the same); Amanda is a virgin (her mincing gait and sloping posture give it away); and while half the sisters are too new to have known Margot, Deirdre remembers her—she always remembers.

With a keen sense of character and unflinching, observant prose, Crane exposes the undercurrents of tension in a world where perfection comes at a cost and the best things in life are painful—if not impossible—to acquire: Beauty. A mother’s love. And friendship…or at least the appearance of it.

My Comments:

Does this sound like a book that is going make sorority girls look good?  I started reading it, and gave up after a few chapters.  I just couldn't find any of those girls to like. 

 I wasn't a sorority member, and my college didn't have national sororities, only local social clubs.  I wasn't a member and saw only the public parts of pledging.  I thought it was a lot of foolishness and couldn't understand why some girls were in tears over pledging activities and yet wanted to continue--if someone deliberately did things that got me upset I'll tell her to take a long walk on a short pier and go find something else to do. Still, all in all, most of the girls I knew who were in clubs were intelligent, competent, basically good people, whereas the characters in this book are all the stereotypical college girls with issues, and none of them really seem like they'd be fun to be around.  Maybe that's why they are all miserable.  

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.  DNF.