Yesterday, I read the YA novel Private by Kate Brian. And by yesterday, I ment in an hour and a half.

It’s not a long novel, nor is it very weighty. It’s genre is the new “young-adult-chic-lit,” and it fits in very well. The story is about Reed, a girl from Pennsylvania with a horrid family home-life, who begins her Sophomore year at Easton Academy, a private boarding school in Conneticut.

It’s very predictable, to say the least. Reed is of course there on scholarships, and of course she was a straight-A student at her previous school. She’s never had any real friends, and desperately wants be be one of the “Billings Girls,” girls who live in Billings Hall, and are generally considered the clique to be in. So of course Reed makes a bad first impression, and sells her soul to try to be in with them.

Reed becomes the girlfriend of the first guy she spoke to on campus; she loses her virginity within the first semester to him. The only originality here was that when he tells her he loves her, Reed nearly laughs:

“You know I love you, right?” he whispered.

I was so shocked I almost laughed.

“You don’t have to say that,” I said.

Briefly, anger flashed through his eyes. “I’m not lying. I love you. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t.

Yeah right.

Bryan doesn’t paint her lead character to be sentimental or naive, which is actually pretty new. Reed recognises that the Billings Girls are using her, but for the most part she doesn’t care, so long as she’s included. When they push her to do something she really doesn’t want to, she pushes right back, even though she’s afraid that they will drop her in response.

The end of the book isn’t really an end. There is no resolution. It’s not even the end of the school year. I realize that this is the first book in a series, but still, it should have ended better than this. I don’t want to give it away, in case someone gets it in their head to read it, but it’s very dissapointing.

The predictableness makes me not want to read any other books in this genre. I’ll probably finish out the series, because I liked Reed as a character well enough, but any other book set in high school will just feel like the same old story. I mean, you can only do the “down-and-out-recluse-makes-it-into-the-popular-clique” so many times before you start to wonder how original it really is.

If I didn’t have the habit of writing YA directed towards high school girls, I probably wouldn’t be reading novels like this. I figured I had better know what’s being published, what girls are reading, and make sure that I don’t fall into the same cliches that abound in Chic Lit–both YA and Adult. Especially since I’ve always wanted to write a novel about girls attending a boarding school.

I do think I’d rather stick to YA Fantasy for my reading, though. At least then the cliches are all magical.