Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Stephanie

The summer before her sophomore year at the esteemed Alabaster Prep boarding school, Frankie Bunny Rabbit Landau-Banks grows into an attractive young woman. With her new physique comes male attention in the form of Matthew Livingston, the handsome and self-assured senior Frankies had her eye on for a while; admittance into his enviable group of friends&and not much else, she soon begins to realize. For everyone only knows her as Matthews Girl, and if she even tries to make a semi-intelligent comment or argument, no one seems to really hear her.

So Frankie decides to take things into her own hands. There is a secret society at school, The Loyal Order of the Basset Hound, that stands for camaraderie, disorder, pranking&and masculinity, for it is an all-male club. Frankies ultra-WASPy father was a proud basset hound, and so, now, are Matthew and his best friend, Alpha (correlation to his pack status totally intentional). But lately the Loyal Order of the Basset Hound has been slipping a bit in terms of the quality of prankstership. I mean, seriously, sticking forks in the grassy quad? How lamer can you get?

When Alpha leaves campus for a few days before Halloween, members of the Loyal Order of the Basset Hound begin to receive emails from the mysterious [email protected], instructing them of what they have to do in order to carry out delightfully roguish pranks. Soon the whole school is in a stir over the social activism of the Basset Hounds pranks; students laudor just laughat the pranks, while the faculty is worried about these students mode of expression for their dissatisfaction in, say, cafeteria food.

Alpha gallantly accepts credit for being TheAlphaDog, the mastermind of the recent great pranks, but when TheAlphaDogs identity is compromised and they must reveal who they are, who is it really? And what are the consequences for that student for usurping the brotherly bond that is the Loyal Order?

E. Lockhart takes us through a delectable romp of the secret lives of boarding school students in a lively novel that combines feminism, teenage boys, and a hearty dose of pranking.