The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman

It's been twenty years since Kersti Kuusk has been to the Lycée, the prestigious boarding school she attended as a teen. Kersti abruptly left the school during her senior year after her best friend Cressida mysteriously fell from the balcony of her dorm. Cressida's fall was declared an accident, but Kersti refuses to believe it. When a mutual friend of theirs passes away and sends Kersti a strange letter, it leaves even more questions about Cressida unanswered.

Now a successful author, Kersti is invited back to the Lycée's 100th anniversary celebration honoring women who have made a significant contribution to the world. Kersti sees this as the perfect time to delve a little bit deeper into exactly what happened the night of Cressida's accident. When a secret letter and incriminating Polaroids show up at Kersti's hotel, she finally puts together the missing pieces of the puzzle. Just how far will someone go to keep the secrets surrounding Cressida's accident?

The Finishing School is told in alternating chapters between the present day and Kersti's school years leading up to Cressida's fall from the balcony. This technique is effective in that it creates tension and suspense, particularly those chapters that focus on Kersti's present day findings.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Spoiler alert…In this book Skippy dies on page 5. Skippy dies while engaged in a doughnut eating contest with his friend Ruprecht. The rest of this funny book is devoted to informing the reader how he came to this end.

Skippy is a fourteen year old student at a boys’ boarding school in Ireland.  He is surrounded by boys his own age, adolescents with the usual adolescent problems and personalities. They inflict one another with cruel nicknames. (Skippy, whose given name is Daniel, is so called because of his resemblance to a kangaroo on a television show.) They play cruel pranks and threaten each other with violence. They regale each other with lies, stories laced with sexual bravado and brave defiance of authority. There are also, of course, teachers. Many are graduates of this same school. They inflict one another with cruel nicknames, such as Howard the Coward. They play cruel pranks and threaten each other with violence. They regale each other with lies, stories laced with sexual bravado and brave defiance of authority. Some are well-meaning but incompetent. Some are consumed with ambition and incompetent. Parents are self-absorbed and indifferent except when their child’s success might reflect back on them. Adolescent girls have their own school and their own forms of cruelty which they inflict on boys, parents and teachers. Drugs are rampant on both campuses.

Skippy falls in love with a beautiful girl from the nearby all-girls’ school.  At first he can only worship her from afar as he watches her play Frisbee. He finally meets her and learns her name (Lori) at the ill-fated Halloween Hop mixer held at his school. The beautiful Lori allows him to think she is his girlfriend, but she is mercurial and manipulative and unworthy of the sweet-natured Skippy. Meanwhile history teacher, Howard Fallon, is just as infatuated with Miss McIntyre, the new substitute teacher, as Skippy is with Lori, and his actions are just as immature as Skippy’s (or more so.)

After Skippy becomes infatuated with Lori, his behavior changes. He becomes forgetful.  He daydreams in class and outside of class. He gets physically ill. He, against his father’s and coach’s wishes, quits the swim team. The teachers notice his uncharacteristic behavior but none step up to properly investigate his problem. Skippy asks to come home for a visit but his father refuses. In the end, the indifference of the adults charged with protecting Skippy is far crueler than any nickname or violence or broken heart a fellow teen could inflict on him.

Skippy Dies is a bittersweet book, a dark comedy with, despite its title and theme, a hopeful end. 

Check out Skippy Dies @ the library!

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani

After a horrific scandal tears her family apart, sheltered, headstrong, fifteen-year-old Thea Atwell is banished from her beloved childhood home on a citrus farm in Florida to the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, isolated deep in the North Carolina mountains.  Forced to leave behind her twin brother, Sam, her older cousin Georgie, and, perhaps worst of all, her beloved pony, Sasi, Thea is exiled from everyone and everything she has ever known.

With the Great Depression just beginning, Thea and the other girls at camp, all the daughters of wealthy Southern men, are sheltered from the worst of the storm tearing apart the rest of the nation.  Although Thea hates that she has been sent away from Sam, Georgie, Sasi, and the Florida heat, the mountains of North Carolina are spectacular, she is surrounded by horses, for the first time is receiving formal equestrian instruction, and is discovering how to makes friends with girls her own age.  Although her arrival so late in the summer means gossip about trouble with a boy at home is rampant among the Yonahlossee girls, the real reason behind Thea's late enrollment is known only by the headmaster, Henry Holmes, and his wife Beth, an old boarding school friend of Thea's mother.  Free to start fresh, Thea must decide if she can forgive herself for what happened - and her family for refusing to forgive her - and become a new, different girl, or if she will allow her desires for the things she cannot have to once again consume her.

This suspenseful family drama slowly reveals its secrets against the spectacular scenery of the Appalachian mountains and the late summer heat of Florida.  Beautifully written, anyone who loves period drama, Southern fiction, or can't resist a boarding school coming-of-age story (really, who can? And this one has horses!) should put The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls on their summer reading list!

The Yonahlassee Riding Camp for Girls will be published on June 4, 2013.  The library received its advance reading copy from the publisher.  Check CountyCat in late spring to place a hold on this Southern novel!