Even though this is a novel about a private boarding high school, I can picture this happening anywhere. A new female teacher, her quirky parents, quirky students and quirky administration, all make for a very good read. Alternating voices, each a chapter long, show us the situation from all points of view.

Story line: it appears the boys are rating the girls on their 'performances" and have their own website where they post their comments and ratings. The girls and new teacher aim to get to the bottom of this no matter what the cost, and what a cost it is! The subject matter may offend some, but the plot was handled well and does not appear to excite prurient interest, but rather shows the pressure girls/women face every day.

The private school is mostly made up of privileged teens, The teamwork crosses all lines to attempt that good over evil will prevail. Loved the writing. It kept me glued. I hated for it to end. New favorite author for me!

Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoy Lisa Lutz's mysteries very much. When I saw that she had a new book I was so excited. The Swallows is not what I expected. It is a dark satirical book that centers around a school and the revenge that we seek in times of humiliation. The characters are edgy with a deep need for revenge and the need to push the secrets that come up within the plot. The Swallows reads like a piece of hard candy with an incredibly gooey center that would be filled with sour liquid. It's a twisty read that will have you following an investigation filled with secrets, lies, and threats.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House books for the E-arc copy of #TheSwallows.

I’ve read Lisa Lutz for years and every new book, I look forward to with hope. To be honest, I was disappointed in this one. It almost seemed like it was supposed to be satire but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. It just didn’t make a lot of sense. Why did we only encounter a handful of students? Why were there so few teachers? I feel like it was supposed to be edgy but it fell flat.

I loved THE SPELLMAN FILES by Lutz but have yet to read anything comparable from her. THE SWALLOWS reminds me a little of Meg Abbott in that there is a nasty center to the story, one I would be fine not reading about.
Alexandra Witt, daughter of a famous writer, joins the faculty at Stonebridge Academy, she's running from her past. As the creative writing teacher her first assignment elicits disturbing responses from students. Before long, Alex is immersed in an investigation of the students, privilege, and things no high school girl should be subject to.

Thank you to NetGalley for a Kindle ARC of The Swallows.

I was a huge fan of The Spellman Files so I was SO EXCITED my request was approved! Yay!

Warning: Trigger themes include sexual abuse, humiliation and idiotic boys and men.

The Swallows is a timely book in this #MeToo age that follows a young teacher named Alex Witt, who joins the faculty at Stonebridge, a second-tier boarding school.

Alex has run to Stonebridge to escape a scandal from her previous school, but unbeknownst to her, she will stumble into Stonebridge's worst kept secret.

Gemma is a student with a shady past, and one of the elite Ten, the popular students. She has made it her mission to take down a disgusting boys' club after her big sister was taken down earlier.

The book is divided into several POVs; Alex, Gemma, an idiot male teacher Finn, and two male allies and students.

I found this flip flopping of perspectives distracting; few authors can pull this off well, if at all. I would have preferred just Alex and Gemma's POVs, or another female student.

For the most part, I liked Alex but I didn't like her as well as I wanted to. She was feisty and blunt, brusque and unflinching. Yet, at times, I found her naive, even after what she had been through previously.

I liked Gemma and her Girl Squad. Their actions are believable, shocking and not surprising.

People are capable of many things, especially violence, regardless of gender. Everyone just has certain boundaries that need to be crossed before we can't take it anymore and cross that first irrevocable step over and past the point of no return.

I did like how the author showed the duplicity of women, those willing to go along with the hideous game, whether through some misguided belief that they held the power or because they are victims of abuse or trauma.

I'm not sure why the author chose to include the perspective of one of the male teachers; a selfish, egotistical, lascivious has-been. He gave me creep-o vibes so maybe that was Ms. Lutz's intention yet his POV was unnecessary and didn't add anything to the plot or motivations of the characters.

The inclusion of Alex's parents was interesting and unexpected; perhaps to show us why she is the way she is; the product of an adulterous father and a reserved woman whose marriage of convenience and security is no secret.

Alex's laissez faire attitude toward relationships was disheartening but no surprise given her parents' relationship but I loved her no nonsense approach when instructing Gemma and her peers in how to regard a certain sexual act. It's not obligatory; it's a choice.

And that blowchart? As Cher in Clueless would say, 'Classic!'

I always enjoy Ms. Lutz's writing and the revenge driven part of the story and was invested in Gemma and her avenging angels.

Characters: 3 Story: 4 Writing: 5

Another wild ride from Lisa Lutz. The setting: pervasive sexual harassment at a New England prep school and the girls who decide not to put up with it any longer. The boys at Stonebridge have a long standing practice of ranking the girls’ sexual prowess on a secret web site. It’s been going on for years, handed from one head boy to the next and tacitly approved by an administration that seems to know all about it.

Alternating between four first-person perspectives, Lutz’ hysterical and sardonic writing puts us in the heads of four characters: Ms. Witt, a new teacher who is appalled by what she sees (and who feels like my favorite -- Izzy Spellman -- with a new name and career); Mr. Ford, a long-time teacher who is writing a novel based on the school; Gemma Russo, a scholarship student hiding her background from the others; and Norman Crowley, the weak, guilt ridden, webmaster who supports the secret website even though he hates everything about it. Lots of other fun characters — newby Linny who takes matters into her on hands in delightfully inventive ways; Claudine Shepherd the bitter librarian; Martha Primm, the world’s worst guidance counselor; and Greg Stinson, the well-meaning but completely inadequate Dean of Students.

The female characters are well-developed; the male characters are stereotypes — like the old madonna / whore dichotomy, the men in this book are either evil or weak and ineffectual. I did enjoy one section where Gemma tells Jonah (one of the weak and ineffectual variety) that he is sweet — maybe too sweet. He responds that it is hard to know how to be a guy and that he was always confused. A small tip of the hat to how the new “norms” of behavior can be difficult and confusing for men. Ms. Witt takes the education of the girls in hand when she creates the Blowchart — a cartoonish flowchart that helps a girl understand when she should give a guy a blowjob (spoiler alert: the chart leads to “No” a lot more often than it leads to “Yes”). I have no doubt that this graphic will spread rapidly on the web once the book is published.

It’s over the top and lots of fun to read, if not totally plausible. Plenty of good messages exhorting girls to take matters into their own hands and not succumb to pressure or tradition.

Great quotes:
“The young may have a better excuse for cruelty, but they are no less capable of it.”

“I have a visceral memory of our fight to the death over the title. It feels like a migraine in my solar plexus.”

“She got up close to the coffeepot and was watching the drip, like a kid staring at her pet goldfish.”

“I also have a few strong and well-documented theories associating personality disorders with specific tie knots.”

“He looked exactly like I thought he would. Shaggy blond hair, skinny, with Mr Potato Head lips and a nose that should have been on a girl.”

“Having a marginally intelligent teenager regard you with superiority can put a man into a deep psychological trough.”

“Some people count sheep. What finally sent me to sleep was cycling through possible job alternatives in alphabetical order. For soporific purposes, you can’t leave anything off the table. I fell asleep sometime after carpet installer”

“Shame is cunning. Even if it doesn’t come from a rational place, it sticks. But that doesn’t mean it’s real.”

“You can keep telling girls to be polite, to keep a level head and it’ll all work out in the end. But don’t be surprised when they figure out that you’ve been feeding them lies. Don’t be alarmed when they grow tired of using their own voices and playing by your rules. And don’t be shocked when they decide that if they can’t win a fair fight, they’ll just have to find another way.”

Do not miss reading this book! From the first page it builds inexorably to a breath-holding, heart-slamming finish. Don't ask whether it is a Young Adult genre, a feminist manifesto, or an illustration of how pitifully small the strides women have made in a man's world. It doesn't matter. Just read. It's filled with humor and exciting writing.

Regardless of your reasons for reading The Swallows, the sheer momentum of the developing tale will keep you glued to the page.. The scene is a Vermont campus of a co-ed boarding school where life does not reflect the bucolic beauty of its surroundings. Into its Fall semester comes Alex Witt, daughter of a famous novelist who has just been assigned Creative Writing classes instead of the English Lit she was promised. Alex's reasons for taking the job have to do with the circumstances under which she left her last position. The Dean is a friend of her family.

Almost immediately, Alex finds something off about the atmosphere at the school. There seems to be a contest for the Dulcinea award that involves the skill of the girls in giving blow jobs to the boys. What starts out as an effort to raising the girls' consciousness about their choices ends in a cataclysmic upheaval that disrupts lives and futures.

It could have been a solid five star review with one small exception. There are so many characters who narrate chapters that it is sometimes confusing and hard to keep them straight. Don't let that stop you. This is a book for our time.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review this novel.

Thank you Net Galley for the free ARC. This was really not my type of book. I do support any effort to get rid of sexual harassment on campus, but I could not enjoy reading about the gory details. Sorry!

Lisa Lutz is too clever by half, as the cliche has it, and since this novel about a creative writing teacher at a progressive, coed boarding school in the Vermont hills is less than half as clever as it might have been, it's no surprise that it's full of cliches as well. It's also sloppy - in lieu of characterization of the adolescents who populate its pages, the author puts them in boxes and labels them, first as a way to remember their names by where they sit and later to reveal what she thinks of them and where they rank in the social hierarchy of the school. She doesn't care much about them, so the reader doesn't,, either, and the secret the protagonist stumbles her way into discovering turns out to be a pretty low stakes game of teenage setting. She's as thinly drawn and essentially one dimensional as the others who people the preppy environs of this forgettable novel.

I'm a big fan of Lisa Lutz and her new book, The Swallows did not disappoint. This was a very different type of book then her series The Spellman Files. This novel is much darker in tone. This very timely story follows a new teacher at a private school who discovers what the male students are capable of and how far the female students are willing to go to put a stop to them.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to read this arc. I highly recommend this title!

Note to Self: Do NOT send my daughter to boarding school.

This book was infuriating and intense and scary and it made me want to scream and throw it across the room and commit random acts of violence. In other words, it did exactly what it was supposed to.

Lutz is a very talented and variable (in the best way) writer. From The Spellman Files to The Passenger to this one, she has demonstrated a consistent ability to dive into the heads of her characters and tell an utterly compelling story that lives and breathes in their unique voice(s), be they funny, smarmy, mysterious, horrible, or endearing. Each of her books/series feels so unique; the only unifying factor is the quality of the storytelling, which is always excellent.

This time she takes on sexual politics and she does it with her usual take-no-prisoners style of blood, guts, and sarcasm. I don't always like multiple narrators, particularly when they are all unreliable, but that format worked perfectly here in a world of he-said-she-said in which there is no truth, just perspective (in all its twisted, gory, horrifying, aggravating glory). Ms. Witt is by far my favorite of the characters in this one; she's Izzy Spellman as an adult, full of just the right amount of self-awareness and ennui to provide the snarky take-no-prisoners tone that ties the kids together in all their twisted quirks and foibles.

This one is dark and angry. As it should be. And it'll make you dark and angry while you read it. As it should. And it's a story that has to be told and retold and reinforced after it's been retold. Well done, Lisa Lutz - well done.

What a timely, excellent novel.

I enjoyed Lisa Lutz's Spellment Files books, and this is very different, but such a riveting, well-written book. I finished it in a day I was so interested.

The book tells the story of new teacher Alex Witt who comes to a new boarding school under mysterious circumstances and begins teaching creative writing. She soon learns the school is run by "The 10" and has a deep undercurrent of unsavory happenings.

The story is told from the perspective of two teachers and two students, all of whom have motivations of their own, and each of whom has a distinct voice. This switching was never confusing and was an excellent way to allow the reader to fully explore the story.

This book is a timely exploration of relationships and responsibilities, and I enjoyed the book so much.

I am such a fan of Lisa Lutz!

Thanks to NetGalley. com, the author and publisher for my advance copy.

This book absolutely blew my mind! So many different themes woven into a stunning and shocking picture of a Vermont prep school. The characters were so vivid that it’s hard to believe that they sprung from the author’s mind, however I’ve read her work before and she has a very creative and interesting mind! The tapestry that came to be was disturbing, shocking, and completely plausible in this world we live in. This book has solidified my fandom of this author, she is definitely talented!! Thanks so much to the publisher and NetGalley for a free ARC in return for my honest opinion. My honest opinion is definitely that this book is not to be missed!

I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Alex Witt takes a job, against her better judgement, at a prestigious school. Some of her students, girls, are being ranked on their blow job abilities. There are only certain boys who are allowed to rate the girls. The girls decide to get revenge. It gets very messy. The tension was good, but not so much so that you feel uncomfortable. I think that it is interesting that books like this are coming out now with the College Admissions Scandal going on in the US. Lisa Lutz has really spread her wings with this book and I can’t wait for the next book

REVIEW
Lisa Lutz’s The Swallows is a patriarchy-smashing exploration of a mediocre boarding school, as told through the narrative perspectives of multiple characters. Teacher Ms. Alex Witt quickly learns that a pervasive culture of misogyny has taken over the school, and it needs to be toppled.

PRAISE
“I devoured The Swallows. You’ll laugh out loud, even as you anxiously flip the pages.”—New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen

“Sharpen your axes, ladies, and get ready for this fierce, fun, unsparing novel of female rage, power, and friendship.”—Camille Perri, author of The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy

AUTHOR
Lisa Lutz is the New York Times bestselling, Alex Award-winning author of the Spellman Files series, as well as the novels How to Start a Fire and The Passenger. She has also written for film and TV, including HBO’s The Deuce. She lives part-time in the Hudson Valley, New York.

The Swallows by Lisa Lutz
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📚 First off all, thank you to the author, List Lutz, Ballantine Books, and Random House for taking a chance on little ol' me and allowing me to read & review an ARC of this book through Netgalley. This is the first book I've been given the opportunity to review and I look forward to the many more to come.
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📚 When Alex Witt started her job at Stonebridge Academy as the new creative writing teacher,  she did it half-heartedly and did not expect to delve into the secret society that alumni had created and students still participated in to this day. Ran by a select few of the top ten in each class, the boys have taken upon themselves to rate each girl they come across sexually, share photos, and essentially gossip in an online forum. Unbelievable, right?!? Even worse, they created the elusive Dulcinea award that is based on a very specific sexual act...that each participating female HAS NO CLUE ABOUT. It is no wonder that a rebellion is in store once the truth is slowly revealed & talk about girl power! The feminist in me was like "Hell yes!" the whole time: laughing with them, cheering them on, chopping down trees, putting up posters, and making those fu**ers pay. But how far can this insurgency go, before it is a bit too far?
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📚 Considering how easily gossip is spread through social media nowadays, this book seems relevant to it's time. I can only imagine how horribly wrong and traumatizing this could be were it to actually happen at this level. Also, I'm not going to lie, the percentage of teenage females feeling pressured to do this sexual act at a single school, made me uncomfortable. It was thrown around left and right and I couldn't help but wonder if girls feel this same pressure in a typical school in real life. If so, we NEED to talk to our daughters/sisters/nieces/etc. and show them Ms. Witt's Blowchart. 💁

A disturbing but topical story about a progressive boarding school, where a group of female students, aided by a newly arrived teacher, band together to stop a degrading and ultimately dangerous “contest” that plagues the school. This is an engrossing, visceral book, with a storyline that’s current and relevant. That it occurs at the high school level only adds to the troubling nature of the book. I’ve read this author before (The Passenger), and enjoy her style of writing, and this book doesn’t disappoint.

Having been devoted to the snappy, delicious Spellman books, I was totally disappointed in this creepy drama about life in the boarding school of horrors.
Great potential for a teen summer movie but not for an adult read.

Alex Witt is at the center of the mayhem in this terrible, horrible school. Too much destruction, too many awful things, not an enjoyable read.

Thank you Netgalley, but sometimes an honest review shows great disappointment.

I enjoyed this a lot. I was thoroughly absorbed in this novel for days. A group of perverse high school boys are playing a sleazy game that someone needs to finally put a stop to. The author's wit gives just the right amount of levity to this story from different character stand points. Most of them weren't as they seemed on the surface and it was intriguing to discover what they were really all about by the end.

Right away, The Swallows hits the ground running. You're immediately brought into Stonebridge's intense ecosystem from the perspective of Alex Witt, a new teacher, who doesn't have time for teenage hierarchal nonsense. We then meet Gemma Russo, a student and rebel trying to topple the abusive status quo from the inside, not long after. Other narrators include student Norman Crowley and faculty member Finn Ford.

This started off as a fun book. It followed some of the familiar beats of a private boarding school, but quickly it turns into something else entirely. We're thrown into the planning stages of a budding rebellion, with none of the unnecessary explanations of why the characters would be so outraged at the state of their school. One group of students is being despicable to another group through various acts of manipulation and fear. By the time the revolt comes to a head, I'm ready to take up arms along with them.

The writing is funny and casual, even with very not-casual subjects. Lisa Lutz overlaps character perspectives sometimes and tells the interactions from multiple points of view, which I enjoyed for the most part. There were a few times I didn't realize that several chapters were all taking place simultaneously, but figured it out eventually.

I got so ramped up that, especially approaching the final act, I wanted to brandish an axe and shave my head--Alas, the ending was inevitable. Not predictable, but it couldn't have ended any other way. The final paragraph was really haunting. This is one of those that's going to stay with you a long time after you've finished it.