S.T.A.G.S.

The Most Dangerous Game comes to a quaint British boarding school for a weekend no one will ever forget. Greer and her friends are looking forward to a weekend of “huntin’ shootin’ fishin’” until it becomes clear that the Medievals are not what they seem and not everyone may make it back to St. Aidan’s. This book is packed with movie references, amazing descriptions of British hunting houses, and enough thrill to keep you going. While the book starts out slow, the ending will make your heart race.

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

Greer MacDonald has just started as a scholarship student at the exclusive St. Aidan the Great boarding school, known to its privileged pupils as STAGS. STAGS is a place where new things–and new people–are to be avoided. And in her first days there, Greer is ignored at best and mocked at worst by the school’s most admired circle of friends, the Medievals.

So, naturally, Greer is taken by surprise when the Medievals send her an invitation to a sought-after weekend retreat at the private family estate of their unofficial leader, Henry de Warlencourt. It’s billed as a weekend of “huntin’ shootin’ fishin’.”

As the weekend begins to take shape, it becomes apparent that beyond the luxurious trappings, predators are lurking, and they’re out for blood.

So this book has been on my TBR since before it came out because I cannot miss a boarding school book. I just can’t. And yet this book is only just now getting checked off my list, almost six months after publication. Whoops. Anyway, there was a lot of chatter about how the book was slow and I know several people that DNF’d it. I understand where they are coming from. The first 75-100 pages or so are slow, a lot of building and description and all that, but then it’s off to the races. By the end, your heart is pounding and you just have to keep reading. So give it a try if you’re skeptical. Hell, you can basically skip the first 75 pages and still be up to speed. Girl goes away from boarding school with the popular kids for the weekend, boom, you’re caught up. You’ll miss some of the mythology and backstory to STAGs, but it’ll all be reiterated later on. This book, while it takes place mostly away from a boarding school, feels absolutely rooted in history with dashes of the present thrown in as an uber smart phone. Ultimately, it’s a YA version of the Most Dangerous Game and I freaking loved the premise, even if I had qualms with the execution sometimes. Personally, I didn’t get half of the film references but I liked that she included more mainstream ones (Beauty and the Beast, Sherlock Holmes) as well to keep the average reader locked in.

Will there be a second book to this series? Perhaps..the door is certainly left open.