Finn’s review of Rites of Spring (Break) by Diana Peterfreund
Contemporary Fiction released by Delta 24 Jun 08
Secret societies on college campus’s have always fascinated me. So when I picked up Rites of Spring (Break) I couldn’t wait for all the secrets it would reveal about those ultra exclusive clubs. I was mildly disappointed.
Rites of Spring (Break) is the third of The Ivy League Novels by Peterfreund. Unfortunately I did not get to read the first two and I was a little lost throughout the story. I am one of those people that like to read books in order. Besides being a little lost it was an intriguing story.
Amy “Bugaboo” Haskel is having a bad winter at Eli University. A rival secret society has launched a personal attack on her, not the whole of the Rose and Grave society but just her. She has had drinks spilled on her, crickets but in her couch, a virus set to her computer, all sorts of pesky things. Come to find out it’s all because her ex-boyfriend’s new girl (a member of the rival society) is pissed off because he can’t seem to stop thinking about Amy. Talk about using all weapons at your disposal to attack some one that annoys you!
Well Amy gets away during Spring Break to Cavador Key, the private island of the Rose and Grave society. Unfortunately the harassment doesn’t stop when she and her friends reach the island. What follows is a growing love between her and another society member, which the society, tongue in cheek, calls incest and random attacks on D177 (this years ruling body of Rose and Grave).
Grade: B
From “witty and endearing” to “impossible to put down,” the critics have given elite marks to Diana Peterfreund’s Secret Society Girl and Under the Rose. Now, in a wildly captivating new novel, Amy “Bugaboo” Haskel and her fellow Rose & Grave knights are trading cold, gray, hyperintellectual New Haven for an annual rite of spring (well, early March) in Florida.
For Amy, a week of R&R on her secret society’s private island should be all fun in the sun—and an escape from an on-campus feud with a rival society that’s turned disturbingly personal. But along with her SPF 30 and a bikini, Amy is bringing a suitcase full of issues to remote Cavador Key. Graduation from Eli University looms, not to mention buckets of unfinished business with a former flame and—most pressing of all—the sudden, startling transformation of a mysterious Rose & Grave patriarch from sheerly evil to utterly…appealing?
Just when Amy thinks Spring Break can’t get any less relaxing, a wacky “accident” puts everyone on edge. And that’s only the beginning, as Amy starts to suspect that someone has infiltrated the island. With some major Rose & Grave secrets to be exposed, and the potential fallout enough to take down one of America’s most loathsome figureheads, what she can’t know is that the party crasher is deadly serious about making sure “Bugaboo” doesn’t get back to Eli alive….
