STAGS: Nine students. Three blood sports. One deadly weekend.

Product Information

The villains are one-dimensional and unappealing, they’re mean because they’re too posh and so are their families, hence they kill people and no one asks questions .The main character is an annoying young girl who loves movies and never shuts up about it. I thought that this element would have served a purpose plot-wise but was just a quirk of hers. The ending could have been brilliant had it been built upon solid foundations. Having been the overall story quite simple and pretty uneventful it just felt like a last attempt to throw in there a witty plot-twist/cliffhanger which will perhaps open the doors to a possible second instalment?

Our main girl Greer is a recent scholarship student at this prestigious establishment and she just wants to fit in with her new peers. It is the autumn term and Greer MacDonald is struggling to settle into the sixth form at the exclusive St. Aidan the Great boarding school, known to its privileged pupils as S.T.A.G.S. Just when she despairs of making friends Greer receives a mysterious invitation with three words embossed upon on it: huntin' shootin' fishin'. When Greer learns that the invitation is to spend the half term weekend at the country manor of Henry de Warlencourt, the most popular and wealthy boy at S.T.A.G.S., she is as surprised as she is flattered. I am obsessed with this series, OBSESSED. I literally devoured this book in no time at all. Somehow, I loved it even more than the first book - and I loved the first book. Reading this at midnight was probably a bad idea though it did spook me a little bit, I'll be honest. This is a subtle YA dark academia dream and I am living vicariously through it.

Author's Titles

S.T.A.G.S honestly surprised me. It is a very eerie story with a twisty plot and an intelligent main character. The story definitely strays from the classic private school book I was expecting. Although this book is a thriller, I feel like there isn’t enough action, and I would have enjoyed more suspense. The first poems are the first inkling, the first admissions, when it still might be otherwise. Then the dawning that it was going to be real. How to tell her ancient mother. How to tell her own body that he is gone--this is one of my favorites of the collection, "Poem for the Breasts": I also thought it quite ingenious how the author wrote the book in five ‘acts’ exactly the number that traditional Elizabethan and Jacobean plays were written of that time. Having the story set locally to me also attracted my interest and I could vividly picture the medieval school and the daunting woods at Longcross. I could've reread 13 Minutes or Little Monsters or We Were Liars and i would had a very good time but instead i chose this book and it ended up being one brutal exhausting and totally disappointing reading experience that bored the feelings out of me.

I feel like this would translate amazingly into film or TV - and the setting would be all the more breathtaking. Think Skins set in Downton Abbey with a dash of Mean Girls. Superb YA sequel for streetwise Greer & the elite students at archaic S.T.A.G.S. school. Suitable for adults too! Apart from that, this book is better than the previous one from the series. We get some new characters - Cassandra and Louis de Warlencourt, Henry's cousins (they were giving me major Charles and Camilla from The Secret History vibes. I mean, blond, attractive twins from rich family, the girl has a boyish haircut and they're a little bit too close for the reader's comfort? Come on!) and Ty, a new student. The action had some nice plot twists and, as the book was nearing to its end, it became more and more tense. Later on in the book, she loses brain function every time Shafeen looks at her because OMG HE LIKES HER So let’s start my ranting by saying that if you’re looking for your next young adult thriller then get out of here as fast of you can because nothing about this book is thrilling and if you think you’re getting into a survival story with guts and stakes then well there’s survival arc alright but it’s so underwhelming and badly executed that if leaves nothing to be desired. I assure you you’ll have a greater time with books like We Were Liars, 13 Minutes and Little Monsters. These three boos are mysterious, atmospheric and disturbing in a way this book wasn’t.

Christmas Cards & Gift Wrap

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • From one of today's best poets—a stunningly poignant sequence of poems that tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom.

Born in San Francisco on November 19, 1942, Sharon Olds earned a B.A. at Stanford University and a Ph.D. at Columbia University.

I grew up in my grandmother's cottage in the grounds of the stately home where she worked, so I saw the landed gentry at close quarters. My childhood was my research - I used to be in and out of the house all the time, and as I grew up became friends with the heirs to the estate. Maybe there is more than one word wirra, but the only one I know is an old-fashioned Irish exclamation of woe which, while no doubt originally Irish, has for at least a century and a half been used in English almost exclusively in the popularized dialect of sentimental stereotyped Irish songs and novels, giving the word in English contexts an ineluctable connotation of “stage Irish:” to my ear, comparing tears to “a wirra of knives” sounds as bizarre as describing surprise as “a begorrah of eyebrows.” For some reason, though, several reviewers have quoted the phrase admiringly as an example of bold poetic creativity. Well, there’s no accounting for tastes.