Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Book Review 34: The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy by Diane Stanley

This was a pretty good book. Of course it's about a school that is very prestigious, and all the students are nice, smart, and very hardworking. Franny's younger sister Zoe, is actually the one the school wants, she's recruited by a famous politician, the first female secretary of state supposedly, in fact. But Zoe won't go without her older sister Franny and her twin brother J.D. Franny and J.D. must go for a weekend of tests to see if they qualify. When they don't, Zoe says she still won't go without them, so Martha Evergood, the secretary of state, pulls some strings to get them all in. At the testing, Franny meets Cal, a moody girl whose father travels a lot and is leaving her there for his job, Brooklyn, a cute boy who writes poetry, and Prescott, an annoying, know it all boy. She is happy to see they are all there when she goes for orientation. Franny wonders if she'll ever fit into a school where all the students there look so perfect, and the "cottages" which is what they call dorms, are all kept so neat, and everyone is talented in some way, be it art, writing, science, etc. But soon they are meeting with counselors who make suggestions about their look, and things seem to calm down, and just work. Zoe and Franny and their brother J.D. are all in different dorms. J.D. is in the "oddball" dorm, and doesn't seem to change as much as Zoe and Franny do. And when they go home for Thanksgiving, and the meeting with Franny's best friend from before goes kind of weird, things start to unravel. But, there's always the famous Allbright Academy brownies to make them feel better.

Good book, I rated it a 5 on the 5 point scale.

I went through the books I had left and rearranged what order I'd read them in by the due date to the library, because a bunch are due back on October 19th, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to renew them this time. So the next book is by an author I've read before, Jordan Sonnenblick, but its premise and cover do not look good at all. And so far, I've read about 2 chapters, and I'm still like ehhh.