Book Report

Brian, Kate. Private. New York, NY. Simon Pulse:2006.

Reason, Type and setting: I chose this book; because it was recommended to me by my cousin which she let me borrow it. This book is a teen novel, and takes place in our current time and age. This book actually is like very relative and modern because a lot of the things they say and could occur in a teenage girl of today. To be more specific the setting of the book takes place at Easton Academy one of the top-ranked schools in the country (Easton, Connecticut).

Plot: During this story of the new girl “Reed Brennan’s” arrival to Easton Academy, she faces a lot of difficulties. First of all she was almost forced to go there for her on will, because how and where she used to live wasn’t really a big deal. No one big and famous came out of her little town she didn’t want to be like everyone else that lived there. And plus living with her mother was like if she was living with the evil step mother in Cinderella, her mom despised Reed and didn’t enjoy her presence, the only person she really loved was her dad. As soon as she started getting used to the school, she knew her best chance was to be part of the Billings girls they were also given greater preference to colleges and had become great people. During the whole beginning she tried really hard to impress the Billings Girls, but the school had a grade policy either you tried your hardest and got excellent grades, or you didn’t and were given a last chance of attending Easton. When she had that first meeting is when she thought her life was going to be over, because she was just getting to know the Billings Girls and they were getting to know her, and there was also this cute senior she was very interested in which had also made signs to her that he had liked her. So she couldn’t let Easton go, when she had everything going for her.
Then after a while, she was soon sitting at the Billings table and was going out with “Thomas Pearson” which was that senior cute guy. When she finds out that he is the schools drug dealer and has been keeping that a secret the whole time, she didn’t even want to talk to him, he begged her for three straight days, and said that he would change just for her. She is madder at the fact that supposedly he “loved her, and wouldn’t lie to her” and she lost her virginity to him. But the Billings girls weren’t the sweetest girls on campus either especially the main one “Noelle”, they made her sneak in the classes in the middle of the night to steal tests, humiliate some guys, and be pushed around by them. In the end when she thought everything was all good with Thomas, she got accepted into the Billings Girls Dorm, and was now part of them. But right after she woke and they told her that she had make the beds, vacuum the halls, and dust the house before they came back for breakfast.

Character:The character I chose is Reed Brennan she is one of the main characters of the book, and in the novel she was the new girl because the rest had already been there she was a sophomore. Reed is a pretty girl, but is a casual dressed girl, very laid-back style. At least compared to most of the girls at Easton, most of the people who went there paid a certain amount, but since Reed had always wanted to go there and was a strait A student at her old high school she had gotten a full-paid scholarship to attend the school. A quality she brought coming to the new school was that she was the “new girl” to them so she tried really hard just to fit in, and made her self look sometimes too vulnerable and desperate to be with the most known kids from the school. She did real rough and bad things just to be and get accepted to the “Billings Girls” which the prettiest, smartest, and highly considered girls from that school who went out with the hottest guys in school. I chose this character because it was the most interesting character throughout the book, and showed most the emotions and ups& downs when she went through them just to try to fit in with everybody else. In the end, she shows everyone who she truly is not just a suck-up and defends her own pride and doesn’t let herself get used by other people and people start to respect her back too.

Evaluation: This book was very interesting to me, because the many things the main character had gone I felt that I could connect with her. During some parts in the novel were she went through I enjoyed reading because I went through the same feeling or had done the same actions as she did. Most of the reason it kept me wanting to read more was that the story was about students and teenagers my age with real life events. One thing that people could learn from this book is that trying your hardest for anything will get you far, and you could anything you as long as you really want, but just because it seems to be what you want or what you see doesn’t mean it is going to come as what you expected. I would most definitely recommend this book to my friends, or maybe even teacher since they witness most these things. But I think older adults may not be too interested in it, because it’s about teens and young adult situations.

Author, Context and Trivia: This book is the first of a series it has a total of five books by “Kate Brian”. As a matter a fact the book ends mind bottling, and leaves wanting to read the next book, because it gives you at the end of the book the first couple pages of the second next book, I have already gone to look for it but, I only seem to find the third and fourth book. But I’m itching to find the second book, the first pages sounded really good, which means the book must really good too.