This morning, I was halfway through this book. I finished it around 8:30 tonight (I wasn't reading the whole time) and I still can't really figure out why. But I loved it.
Not really the pageturner of all pageturners (although I think my standard for that is somewhat distorted and unfair), The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks is another one of those books that take place at a boarding school. I don't know what it is about boarding school life that is so fascinating, because it's basically a more strict version of college, but it seriously makes me wish I went to boarding school instead of lame public high school. Which says a lot, because I couldn't even stand living on campus at college for two weeks.
The characters in this book are just... my God, I wish I had people like that in my life. They're equal parts likable and dislikable.
First, you've got Frankie. She's all determined not to be left out or underestimated or judged based on anything except her character, sometimes to her own detriment. Hence the Disreputable part. At the same time, she's terrified of being forgotten. Her boyfriend, who we'll get to in a second, met her several times before she fell off her bike and he introduced himself, but he either pretended not to remember her or actually didn't remember her. He doesn't get involved in other people's worlds and Frankie realizes this, but still she's set on being part of his. Mistake Number One. So she researches the "secret society" he's in and actually knows more about it than any of the current members, because her father was also in it and talks about it incessantly. It's a boys-only society, so she obviously can't join, which nags at her brain because she hates 1) being excluded and 2) being judged because of her gender. So she orchestrates a bunch of pranks under the guise of the society's leader, Alpha-- who I'll also get to later-- and gets angry when her boyfriend doesn't suspect her at all when he finds out it wasn't actually Alpha who plotted the pranks. Because now he's not only 1) excluded her 2) based on her gender, but 3) underestimated her. She tells him everything she did and he gets so angry because Alpha is getting in trouble for what she did (which is a valid reason for him to be angry, because Alpha is his best friend), and she sees it as a double standard because all of the pranks were legendary when everyone thought Alpha was the mastermind, but now that it was Frankie, he's appalled. Long story short: they break up and Matthew and his friends go back to not knowing Frankie at all, not even acknowledging her existence. Just like before, when he hadn't remembered her from the multiple times they had already met.
And then you've got Matthew. While he's kind of despicable in some ways, like how he never told his girlfriend anything and never got involved in her life and always expected her to be inhis, I actually kind of liked him. He's a respectable guy, I mean. He stuck up for her when necessary, although sometimes he was condescending and I did want to slap him in the face and yell, "chauvinist!" He's smart and cares about grammar (someone says, "I could care less," and he corrects them, "Couldn't care less! If you could care less, that means you care a fairly decent amount. It's couldn't care less." And his friends always say they want to kill his "inner copy editor"), which is just something I generally admire even though Frankie saw his constantly correcting her as a way of proving his superiority or something, and he's just nice. He analyzes everything except the pranks he does with the Basset Hounds (the secret society), which Frankie hated because she put a lot of thought into the pranks and they all had not-so-hidden messages, but it's for a good reason. His involvement in the Basset Hounds isn't for any kind of social commentary or change or anything, it's a friendship thing. These boys forge lifelong friendships and they take the loyalty of the club really seriously. That's not such a bad thing, Frankie. So when he finds out that Frankie's been messing with his club, that Alpha might not be able to be in the Basset Hounds anymore, he has a real reason to be angry with her. Suck it up, Frankie, he might have underestimated you and condescended to you occasionally, but it's your fault he doesn't want to be your boyfriend anymore. And that's the thing: she still wants to be his girlfriend. She has bigger fish to fry in the areas of feminism and social movements, but she still "loves" (arguable) Matthew. Because he's NOT A BAD GUY.
Aaaand then there's Alpha. Over the summer, before any of this happened, before Frankie fell off her bike in front of Matthew and he introduced himself, she was on the beach with her family. She went off to get a frozen custard (I don't know what this is, but it sounds like I need one) and then decided it was too cold to finish it, so she was about to throw it away when she heard, "You gonna eat that?" This boy she had never seen before was asking her for the rest of her half-eaten frozen custard. They had a small argument-- more like banter-- about wasting custard, and then she gave it to him. He asked her where she went to school and she told him, and he said that he went to school in New York City, but then he was like, "Maybe I'll see you around." And Frankie's like, "But you just said you go to school in New York." And he's like, "You said Alabaster Prep, right?" and basically that was it. Cut to, like, the second day of school, and he's on her campus. She has met Matthew by now, and it turns out he and Matthew are best friends, but Alpha pretends he's never seen her before. Frankie starts to think that this is because he's deferring to Matthew-- he's interested in her, but she's Matthew's-- like some kind of unwritten rule. She mentions meeting him on the beach and he denies it, but then maybe a week later he starts talking about how girls don't appreciate food enough, and says something about frozen custard and girls who just give half of theirs away. So he does remember. Anyway, it turns out that Alpha is the leader-elect of the Basset Hounds, except he got kicked out of school last year so Matthew is the stand-in. Alpha has a lot of opinions-- the only real pizza is from New York, people should walk on the grass when there's a sign that says "keep off the grass" because it's shorter and nobody's going to enforce it, and the thing about girls and food-- which Frankie debates with him. Like I said, they have banter. Also, Alpha is the only one of the Basset Hounds who actually cares about the pranks they do. He looks for the meanings in them, and figures out that it's Frankie long before she admits it. When she finally does, he gives her due props and says he underestimated her, but that he "can't deal with" her. [Honestly, my vision is that Frankie and Alpha get together after the book ends, because they are so.dang.perfect for each other. They think so much alike but their opinions are so different, it just makes me go all "TEEHEHEEE!"]
Minor characters include Zada, Frankie's sister who's studying psychology and analyzes everything Frankie does and tells her when she's being ridiculous, and also tells her not to let Matthew "erase her"; and Porter, Frankie's ex-boyfriend who cheated on her and ends up being a spy in the Basset Hounds, working for the principal who's looking for a reason to expel Alpha because he's on scholarship and is not considered an upstanding member of the student community. That is, he's been caught smoking/drinking on campus, he does pranks, and his family is not rich enough to buy him out of an expulsion.
But really, the book isn't about the relationships or anything. Frankie ends up not being a part of Matthew and Alpha's group anymore, which she had before realized could happen in an instant, but instead she kind of becomes a legend among other groups. Mainly the geeks, like the student government-- who want her help with social/political changes on campus, and the AVT club-- who were inspired by her use of their materials to perform the pranks. And she still has her roommate/friend Trish, who doesn't understand Frankie's motivations, but that's probably a good thing. Because Frankie's really angry all the time. Her mom and sister make her go to a counselor once a week after this whole ordeal.
So yeah. Frankie isn't the most likable character, but neither is anyone else. Which kind of makes them more real. And it's definitely a girl-power book. "A funny feminist manifesto that will delight the anti-Gossip Girl gang." -Kirkus Reviews
Song of the Book: 99 Times by Kate Voegele
Just change the lyrics "I'm gone and you're invisible" to "You're gone and I'm invisible," and this is the perfect song for this book.
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