Customer Rating: Summary: Angieville: UNDER THE ROSE Comment: Reading Secret Society Girl: An Ivy League Novel (Ivy League) put me in righteously indignant mode for two days straight. Now, admittedly, it doesn't always take much to send me there but, since my indignation was on behalf of fictional characters and couldn't hurt anyone, well, real, I figured it was okay to let the wrath reign. Besides, some of those dudes really deserved it. My wrath, that is. Reading UNDER THE ROSE was an entirely different experience. I spent the majority of the time grinning madly, silently egging certain characters on while berating others for their a) lack of the barest trappings of a conscience or b) inability to just come out and say what's really bothering them.
And boy was there a lot of bothering going on. At the start of the book, it quickly becomes apparent someone within the secret society is leaking information to outsiders intent on destroying them. Amy, known within the Rose & Grave annals as Bugaboo, is dismayed to find out she's lived up to her society nickname when none of the other Diggers will listen to her pleas for help investigating the leak. Caught up in their own lives and dramas, her fellow Diggers leave Amy alone to fret and fester over the fraying society she's been so loyal to (and so instrumental in saving in the last book). And Amy has her own heady distractions in the form of her senior thesis, her roommate Lydia's love life woes, and the persistence of one George Harrison Prescott.
I thought UNDER THE ROSE was an even stronger story than its predecessor. The pace never flagged, the dialogue was sharp, and the characters became more interesting and more dear, as evidenced by the fact that my heart went out to two of them who'd done nothing but irritate me in the first book. I love it when that happens! I was particularly enamored by the unwilling alliance Amy forms with a certain caustic law student and the verbal sparring that ensues. Ah, the things she gets roped into doing in the name of the greater good. This book was a smooth, delicious treat and when I closed it I felt like we'd all of us had a good time. Customer Rating: Summary: Fast-Paced Fun Comment: This is the second book in the "Ivy League" series by Diane Petrefreund. The third book in this series - Rites of Spring - will be available June 2008. In general, between this book and the first one, Secret Society Girl, I still feel like these books are failing a bit at living entirely up to my expectations - I feel like there are just too many archetypes to make the books really satisfying as other books in this genre of fiction can be.
In this one, Amy Haskel is back at school for her senior year as a full-fledged Digger (member of a secret society) but things are once again on the fritz within the Rose & Grave as the group receives threatening messages and their secrets are being leaked to a conspiracy website. The author does a good job of setting up a ton of suspects and subplots from the first chapter - you never know who to trust within the group and on the outside, which makes for a fun guessing game as to who the rat within the group is. Even then, once the main mystery of the story is uncovered, it's suddenly revealed that the betrayal in the group goes much deeper than originally thought!
These books are hard to sum up without giving a lot of information away so that's all I can really say. In terms of pros, the book really was good at making me suspicious of a lot of people in the beginning and I kept on guessing what the twists were going to be - I didn't anticipate too many of them mostly because some of them were kind of completely from left field. Still I found the book entertaining and gripping enough to be a page turner that I finished in a few days so that's probably a good sign.
Also I still give the author credit for creating some very realistic portrayals of the different types of college students out there, I recognized almost every 'archetype' she had, and the protagonist was a good mix of ivy league pretentiousness and naive twentysomething. All in all I'm looking forward to the next book, if only for a bit of fun reading. Customer Rating: Summary: GREAT Sequel Comment: I read "Secret Society Girl" recently, and enjoyed it but i felt it didnt live up to my sxpectations. I bought this one hoping it would be better and it was! It was well written and a fun novel. Customer Rating: Summary: In Love!!! Comment: I was so excited when my copy of 'Under the Rose' came in the mail. I literally did not put it down for an entire day. From page one Peterfreund has the reader hooked not just with the story line, but with the characters and their relationships. This book was amazing and I just cannot wait until the next one comes out! Customer Rating: Summary: UTR rocks! Comment: Diana Peterfreund has her second hit with UNDER THE ROSE. Peterfreund has big shoes to fill after the popular Secret Society Girl and she fills them with ease. The book is witty, sexy and engaging from the first page to the last. The enjoyable Amy Haskel shines in UTR and the plot didn't stop twisting until the final page. Definitely a must read and a book you'll enjoy again and again.
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