Well written and not very enjoyable. My stomach was turned by Lily's victimization, Hazel was an unconvincing evil mastermind. Jonah's character was surprisingly well rounded. As with all New England prep school novels I have read, it made me glad not to have attended a New England prep school. ( )

This book was well written and engaging, but overall it lacked something for me that I can't put my finger on. It felt a little bit like everything was right on the surface, that people didn't really have interior selves, I guess. No one seemed to really grow or change. ( )

I read this for one of my bookclubs, which was enticed to read it as part of the author's promotion strategy to set a record on the number of bookclubs she would attend over a set period of time. It took awhile to get into it and I found it rather troubling, particularly since some shocking revelations were recently made about the private school my children attended back in the 80s and 90s. It is well-written and shifting the narrative among different characters worked for me. I can't say I would recommend it to others -- if someone has an interest in this type of story, I think Donna Tartt's The Secret History is a better choice. ( )

This was one where reading from different points of view made the whole book for me. Miller really made me remember the horribleness and immaturity of high school but in a very clever way. ( )

I wanted to like Year of the Gadfly so much. Prep school hijinks, secret societies, a coming of age tale! What’s there not to like? And yet the execution of a great-sounding premise didn’t hit the mark. Initially the story seemed like a promising look at ideas about conformity, the hyper competitiveness in high achieving students, as well as issues like bullying, guilt, and jealousy. But halfway through the book, I had to do some heavy skimming (mostly through the flashbacks) because I lost hope that the story would pull me in.

The story unfolds through the eyes of Iris Dupont, the new kid at a prep school in Massachusetts, who investigates a secret society that’s taken upon itself the role to render judgment and punishment for those it sees as deviating from the morals and principles underpinning the school. Are they the good guys as they paint themselves to be or are they just bullies? Alternating with Iris’ chapters are those told in the view of one of Iris’ teachers, Jonah Kaplan, who was a former student at the school and seems to be hiding some secrets himself. Interspersed throughout are flashbacks told from the view of another student.

These multiple points of view just didn’t work in this book. Had the book just stuck with Iris, maybe I’d have been more engaged. Tons of books do multiple perspectives and do so effectively, but in Year of the Gadfly, it wasn’t smooth. The mystery that’s supposed to be revealed layer by layer couldn’t survive the jumps and interruptions.
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