The Final Chapter

This is the last book in the Private series and I have waited a long time for it!  Bought it on the kindle app while I was away and finished it just now.  I wish that Vengeance had come out before Cruel Love because once you read CL you know what happens to Reed.  But you know, that's okay!  By this time all of us are pretty sick of Reed's whining anyway!  Still, you have to love her, and especially Nicole.  I am sad to see this series end because it was such fun!

It Arrived!

Cruel Love was there on my Blackberry Whispersync Thingy when I woke up this morning!  And I just finished it now, sneaking looks at it all day.  I just couldn't wait to find out how the story of Arianna Osgood would end.  Arianna first appeared in Private and then had her own spin-off with Privilege (the series that finally helped me to learn how to spell that word, without a "d") where she continued her murderous rampage.  I guess I was the last fan left, as both of those web pages up there haven't been updated in a long time.  That's a shame.  I really enjoyed the ride!
You have to read the whole series to enjoy this book, but I must admit to the guilty pleasure, this was a great ending to a fun, fun series!

Make New Friends and Kill the Old...

That's the tag line for Perfect Mistake.  I think that would be a great tag line for a horror movie, too.  I wonder if any have used it.  A very quick google search came up empty.  Anyway. 

I think that I enjoy the Privilege series more than Private.  I am not sure though.  Maybe Private just should have ended in six or seven books, or maybe the crew just shouldn't have gone to St. Barts.  Or maybe Reed should just have stopped whining!  Or maybe they should have gotten into the witchcraft sooner and a little more smoothly.  Anyway, in Perfect Mistake  I found that I had to keep reminding myself that Ariana is a bad chick!  At times I was actually rooting for her!  That's not good! I also loved the blue color on the book.

Nearly Over

Now I have finished all of the published Private books.  I must say that I am still hooked and probably will buy Vengeance instead of waiting to get it at the library, but that doesn't mean that my recent dislike of Reed has changed!  I really don't like this girl.  She is way too whiny and miserable.  I do love Noelle though.  It's funny how things change as the series goes on.  Ominous is quite ominous indeed, especially for those of us who really believe that witchcraft is something to be avoided.  It is realistic though, as I have known a lot of people who get caught up in this kind of thing.  I remember when the movie The Craft came out, at my place of work there was this high school girl, who was so into the whole witchcraft thing.  She was also really vain and even said, "I, of course, am the witch of beauty.  Because I am the most beautiful of our coven."  Hilarious.  But while her arrogance was laughable, I don't think that witchcraft is a laughing matter.  I know it isn't devil-worship,  I understand what Wicca is and all of that and I it is definitely not something that I would get involved in at all.
Anyway....this book probably has the most violence in it of all of the books so far and it is way out there.  The series has jumped the shark for sure, but the problem is, I have jumped with it and must see it to it's bizarre conclusion!

Back in the Day...

when real ladies were witches and cast spells and killed each other...The Book of Spells is set in the good old days.  The Billings Girls are witches.  Most of the non-Billings girls would probably have no problem believing that.  Figuratively anyway.  But in BOS we discover that all along the girls have had serious witch power.  This prequel goes back to 1915 and features Eliza, Catherine and Theresa who have discovered a book of spells and are desiring to form a coven.
I usually don't like books set in the past, but I really did like this one.  I also felt it was decently written and a lot better than the past few Private novels.  I wouldn't read a whole series set in these bye-gone days, but this was just the right touch to help Private series fans understand what's going on at modern-day Easton. 

I Get Deep Suspicions

What a fantastic song.  Suspicion.  And I defy ANYONE to tell me that back in the day, Eddie Rabbitt wasn't hot.   So hot!  And that song....can you imagine being Eddie's girl and cheating on him?  No way.
So Suspicion is the latest book that I read in the Private series and I have to say, I liked it even less than Paradise Lost.  The girls and their guys are still on St. Barts.  Reed is even more of a giant whiner.  Someone is trying to kill her and she won't leave the freakin island.  She tries but everyone talks her into staying.  At this point, I wonder if maybe her friends want her to be killed!  But no, for some reason, they like Reed.  Reed is wearing on me, man.  Fast.  I really need them to get back to Easton, soon!

A Pair of Dice

I really love this series, but I may have hit a snag.  I found Paradise Lost to be not as good as the previous Private books.  It might have been because this time around the Billings Girls and their boys are on St. Barts for Christmas break and at school.  The whole island thing really isn't my style.  Or maybe it is because Reed is truly, truly turning out to be a major whiner.  I know bad things have happened to the girl, but come on.  I am just suprised that Noelle hasn't slapped her upside the head. 
Reed finds out that the big game on the island is The Upton Game.  Every girl plays (except for Noelle who is pretty much too cool to do that kind of thing) and the object is to hook up with Upton Giles, a young British billionare.
Upton only has eyes for Reed, even though she is really whiny!  And this makes Reed the target of vengence from Poppy, Upton's former girlfriend. 
It was okay...but I really wanted the girls to get back to Easton.

A REALLY bad song

This is such a terrible, horrible, awful song.  How many times have I been stuck in a store at Christmas time...or anytime after October 3rd, considering how early radio stations start playing Christmas music, and this terrible, horrible song comes on and there is no escape.
I almost didn't want to read Last Christmas because I was afraid that this song would somehow leak into my brain.
Another aside.  Why is the picture of the cover so small?  It is really tiny.
Ahem...back to the book, a prequel to Private.  It follows Ariana Osgood and what held her to commit the heinous acts she committed later.  Ariana is a psycho.  This is true.  Hearing her story doesn't give her a pass.  It definitely proves she is not as psycho as Margaret Simon, though.  Ariana invents her own twisted excuses for the things that she does.  Margaret doesn't even think it is necessary to invent excuses.
In Last Christmas Ariana and bad-boy Thomas Pearson are snowed in on the campus of Easton.  I loved this part.  How cool would it be to have most of a private school campus all to yourself and the campus bad boy?  Very cool.  Ah but everything goes terribly, terribly wrong.

Do parties like these really happen?

So in the Private world, all of the kids in the country's elite private schools get invited to this MASSIVE Halloween Party called The Legacy.  Graduates get to go, too.  A night of total sin, wild excess, that kind of stuff.  Do these things really happen?  I have no idea how to find out.  I guess there is no way.  Oh well.

in The Legacy Reed finds out that all of the other private school students and grads have been invited to this year's Legacy party-- all but Easton!  She is determined to find out why this has happened and make sure that all of the Easton folks can go.

It's another mystery story and I swear, I still can't catch on to who is the bad guy/girl.  Ivy Slade is a new character and I THINK she is evil, but who knows.  Great fun. 

True Confessions

A murder mystery comes to its conclusion at the end of the fourth book in the Private Series.  The wikipedia article is MUCH better than the official website!  I never really saw the it coming, so I figure either this two-week cold is really getting to me, or it was really well done from the mystery side of things. 

The killer.  As nasty as a PTSs.  Nope.  The killer had his/her reason.  True, true, the killer was demented and twisted, but Brian explains WHY the killer did what he/she did.  At least the author took the time to explain the motivation.  The killer here should be found guilt of murder.  The PTSs?  Well, they are truly insane. 
Can't wait to read number five!

Turning into a Mystery Series

I really didn't know that the Private series was a mystery series.  The website for the series, by the way, is awful!  Every time I look at it I get a headache!  I can't make sense of it at all!  I don't know if that was Kate Brian's intention, but it has become one with Invitation Only, the second in the series. 

Murder is the crime here.  But are the girls of Billings Hall as nasty as the PTSs yet? 

Na. 

Great fun!  I wanted to read this so badly that I downloaded it to my Blackberry via Whispersync!

It's Kinda Private...

So Private is a series that I can't stop reading now and I'm glad.  I needed to get back into the game!  Private is an amazingly guilty pleasure series.  It's a lot like The Clique or The Sorority Trilogy (well without the hocus-pocus).  There are "cool" girls and girls who want to be cool, even though the cool girls are really mean girls.  The Zombie Blondes if you will.  Oh no, no, no, no!  Make no mistake.  These girls at The Easton School, a private co-ed high school in Connecticut, are NOTHING like The Four PTSs!  No way!  I mean, no one is that mean!  Morally bankrupt.  Did I ever call Margaret and her evil friends that before?  If not, I should have.  Oh but I don't want to think about them this close to bedtime.  Let me get back to nicer girls.  Girls like The Billings Girls, the girls who live in the most exclusive dorm at Easton.  The ones who all go on to be members of the Senate or movie stars.  The ones who plot to have one another thrown out of school or get their professors fired.  The ones who play incredibly mean tricks on one another all to prove "loyalty."  These girls are nasty, but they sure ain't Judy Blume's devil girls! 
I am completely obsessed with this series. 
Reed is from the Middle of Nowhere, PA and she's got a very bummed-out home life.  Her dad is a nice guy and her brother is a nice guy, too.  He's off at Penn State, so she doesn't seem much anyway, but all three of them have to deal with mom who is a drug addict.  I read in one review that it was weird that Reed was so unsympathetic toward her mother in this regard.  While I agree with other parts of the review (I mean this book is NOT great literature at all!)  I completely disagree with the reviewer questioning Reed's attitude toward her mom's addition.  Reed is obviously not an overly caring teen as it is and even the most caring teens might have tough time feeling warm and snuggly toward a mother who is an addict.  But that's just my opinion.
So Reed, wanting badly to escape life in the Middle of Nowhere applies and is accepted to Easton Academy.  It's a bit overwhelming for her.  Everything from the glamour of the rich kids and their lives (she is a scholarship student) to the difficulty of the classes.
It's not easy to like Reed, but maybe I just compare everyone to Margaret Simon and in doing so, everyone else looks like a saint. 
Easy to read.  Quick.  Not believable.  But fun!