Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Stephanie

A new series emerges out of a world already full of Gossip Girls, A-lists, and Cliques. Sophomore Reed Brennan has been accepted into the prestigious Easton Academy on scholarship. Getting out of her depressing hometown and her emotionally abusive mothers grasp is liberating for Reed, but it is not too long before she once again feels like retreating into her usual antisocial loner shell. The only bright spot in her life is the bad boy Thomas Pearsontotally wrong but dangerously attractive and attentive to her.

Then she meets the Billings girls. They are beautiful, brilliant, and the best...and there are only four of them who really matter: Noelle, Ariana, Kiran, and Taylor. Reed thinks that shell be set if she can only become one of them, and so takes every opportunity to suck up to them. Sure, some of the things they make her do, such as stealing a test, make her think twice, but Reed knows that without the Billings girls, shed simply be another sophomore nobody at Easton.

However, the Billings girls and Thomas dont get along. In the meantime, Thomas has secrets of his own, too, and Reed fluctuates from desperately wanting to be part of the Billings girls to hating them for having a sickening power over everyone. Can Reed love Thomas, please the Billings girls, AND stay true to herself all at once? That seems like an impossible mountain to climb.

There is really nothing that has already been written in Private. Thomas is the stereotypical guy we hate to love, and Noelle is your average two-faced perfect villainess. There will certainly be room in this world for Private and its fans, though.