Morning Glories Vol. 1 by Nick Spencer, Joe Eisma, and Rodin Esquejo

Morning Glory Academy is one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country. Only the intellectual elite are allowed into the hallowed halls. For the new students, this could be the start of an incredible future.

Casey is an outrageously smart girl, with a drive to outdo her peers and do what's right. Morning Glory is Ike's last chance after being kicked out of seven other schools, he is a privileged psychopath with no real desire to care for anyone else. Zoe always gets what she wants, especially if it's coming from a boy. Hunter is the boy next door, with a strong moral compass and a fatherly benevolence. Jade is a rather stereotypical emo, with a rather unhealthy crush on her teacher. Jun has an agenda and the abilities to carry them out, but no one else knows what they are. They think they're all special in some way, until they meet one another at Morning Glory Academy. As they try and survive orientation, they must question not only why they've been chosen for the school but also what the true agenda of the sadistic Miss Daramount is, and what else is inhabiting the school

I would like to state that I wasn't gung ho about this series when I picked it up. It sounded too violent and a bit cliche to hold anyone's attention. That's when I read the first ten pages and got bitch-slapped in the face and sucker-punched in the gut. This graphic novel is a fast-paced psychological thriller. Yes it's violent, and yes there's some romance, but it's also got more twists than the first season of Lost. I kept reading it and thinking, "What the what?" Well that's not really what I was thinking, but my parents read this so we'll keep it PG-13. Morning Glories never really lets you stop to ponder why something is, it is so crazy fast. It just leaves you with the absolute need to continue reading in the hope that something, anything, will be explained or some crumb of information will be handed to you. Instead Nick Spencer makes you work for it. You can't say once you've finished that you get anything in this literary universe, but you know that you crave a bit more. Fan-fricking-tastic.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

I have been listening to Prep on audio book for a few weeks now, I had gotten it when I had to drive down to a family reunion, but the round trip wasn't long enough to finish it (it was an almost 18 hour recording) so it took me a while to get through it. I had some very strong reactions to it, but first, the summary.

Lee Fiora leaves her small town in Indiana for boarding school in New England at the prestigious Ault School. The book follows all four years of Lee's time at Ault, her struggles to feel a part of the school, attempts to be one of them, the conflicts with her family. It's a little hard to summarize, actually, as there wasn't one main plot. It was just her four years at the school and the things that happened to her.