Waste of paper. Couldn't stand this book. None of it made sense and the writing style was all over the place at first I thought, cool, this is unique but this was a drab to say the least. I will never be proud of reading this. ( )

Bailed.

Sorority by Genevieve Sly Crane
Source: Netgalley
My Rating: 2/5 stars

I’m not sure there’s a place to start with this review and I very much want to avoid ranting and/or bashing so I’ll start with good and go from there.

The Good

The Writing: Genevieve Sly Crane sure knows how to weave a tail, and she pulls all the words together in a rather beautiful way. She hasn’t created a single novel, but shorter individual stories that are connected by the sorority each girl is a member of.

The Characters: Like the writing, the characters are beautifully written, very real girls/women who have very real lives, difficulties, and issues. Every story reveals the portrait of an individual, and though there are a ton of characters, each is very much an individual with her own story to tell. Please note: my assessment in this section is solely related to the author’s skill and ability. As you shall see below, it has nothing to do with the personalities of the characters.

The Bad

The Characters: For as beautifully written and real as each character is in this book, there is not a single one in the group who is worth rooting for. From the moment this set of stories opens to the very last page I found myself somewhat disgusted by the behavior of every character. Every member of the house has some sort of emotional issue and/or trauma that requires professional help/therapy. Where the issue comes for me is the fact that NOT one of those girls makes any effort to get help and/or seek treatment. In fact, each girl makes a concerted effort to not only hide her issue or continue with it/them in order to impress the other members of the sorority. Finally, there is the fact that most of the girls know about one another’s issues and rather than try to help one another, they find vile ways to encourage the behavior and then delight in their “sisters” pain. There is truly not a single redeeming quality to be found among any of the characters in this book.

The Bottom Line: While I certainly can’t criticize the author’s writing abilities, I do have a huge problem with the characters who live within the covers. With what was perhaps a great sense of naivety, I stuck with this book all the way through to the end with the stupid hope just one character would do something decent and/or good. Had just one good thing come out of this read, I may have had an entirely different opinion. Alas, I was let down and can’t find a way to reasonably recommend this book to any reader.

P.S. Though I was never a sorority girl, I find it very hard to believe there is a sorority on earth as truly awful as the one depicted in this book. Yet again, this may be great naivety, and if they are this bad, may God have mercy on your souls ☹ ( )

This book was not exactly what I expected. It is not a neat story of sorority life on an idyllic Northeastern college campus. It is actually more of a “true” story. It is the story of a sorority with all its warts showing, told as a series of stories set during and after college about the sisters of this sorority. The sisters were a diverse group with a prim and proper “church” girl, the girl who sleeps around, the ones who drink and do drugs, and they didn’t all know each other well nor did they necessarily like each other. The stories center around one cataclysmic event in the life of this sorority, the death of a pledge from an overdose. This format made the book a little disconnected but I still enjoyed it. It reminded me of my sorority days, a walk down memory lane with all its bumps and potholes. I would like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read and review this book. ( )

I won this in a GOODREADS giveaway. ( )