Thank you to NetGalley for the readers copy in exchange for a (very late) review.
I normally like the media I consume to be a bit dramatic but I fear this may have been a bit too much for me. I loved the premise and beginning of the story but as it went on I felt that everything was exaggerated to the point that I was taken out of the story. This was a me problem.
I think I might be better suited to her adult books maybe.

This was a fun YA Thriller that was unexpectantly dark.
Which should have been expected because Sutanto loves straddling that line.
Lots of twists and turns and I can't wait to read more of her YA.

I liked this book but I didn’t love it. It was very Pretty Little Liars meets Gossip Girl, especially in the way it was so overly unrealistic for what these high schoolers are getting into. Like, just go to the cops from the get-go and get it all over with. I will say, Lia did try to go to an authority figure very early in the book and was demonized for asking for help. I found it so hard to believe that adults in a school setting would be so unwilling to help a student in need or at least follow up on her claims, but maybe I’m the naive one here. There were parts that were very shocking to me and others that were very predictable.

I realize that Jesse Q. Sutanto is a bigger household name with her Aunties and Vera Wong series of adult mysteries, but I discovered her through her bang-up YA suspense thriller, The Obsession. That book ended up being one of my favorite reads of 2021, and I was excited to hear that the author was going to continue on with a series, of which The New Girl is book 2 and yes, I'm just getting around to it.
Here's the thing, it's not really a sequel. It's set in the same universe and is more of a prequel. A few characters from The Obsession are here (Sophie, Logan, the cops...) but not much else. This can be read purely as a stand-alone.

Lia Setiawan is a mid-distance running track star and thinks her ship has come in when she wins a full-ride scholarship to the prestigious private school, Draycott Academy. However it doesn't take long for Lia to realize she's in way over her head. She's quite literally getting a tour of campus when she witnesses a girl getting hauled out of a building by security, kicking and screaming. And the rest of the students? Don't even bat an eye. Speaking of, the student body is full of rich kids with their designer clothes (and designer drugs) and she quickly runs afoul of mean girl, Mandy, who Lia outperforms on the track, getting Mandy kicked off the varsity squad. Lia quickly becomes a hot topic on the school's anonymous social media app, Draycott Dirt - and naturally everything being said about her is unflattering.

That's not the worst of it though - that's reserved for Mr. Werner, Lia's English teacher. Lia quickly runs into problems with him as he starts failing her right out the gate. Then Lia stumbles across a major scandal - it seems Mr. Werner is selling good grades to the highest bidder. And Lia, she of the single Mom, one-bedroom apartment, on a scholarship, does not stand a chance. Failing Mr. Werner's class puts her track scholarship in jeopardy and, in turn, puts Lia's hopes for a college education in jeopardy. The only thing going her way? Danny, the cutest boy in school seems to have taken a shine to her. But even that gets complicated thanks to his racist parents and the fact that Mr. Werner is his uncle by marriage.

It's a lot. And eventually this toxic stew gets to bubbling and the bodies start dropping - with Lia right in the crosshairs.

A plus of this story is that the heroine acts and reacts like one would think a teenager would when dropped into extraordinary circumstances. The downside? The heroine acts and reacts like one would think a teenager would when dropped into extraordinary circumstances. Folks, this is a non-stop cavalcade of bad decisions from our heroine, start to finish. Even worse? The reader is stuck in her reactionary, frantic brain for the entire story as she continues to make one bad decision after another.

It is, and this cannot be overstated, exhausting. How this dumb bunny manages to skate out of serious trouble in the end beggars belief. Look, different strokes and all that, but frantic characters running off half-cocked making terrible decisions does not make for compelling reading. It just doesn't. Go ahead, fight me.

The other major problem with this book? Whoever at the publisher approved the back cover blurb has hopefully been fired since this book came out in 2022. There's a huge, honkin' spoiler in the back cover copy. Look, I may not know much, but I do know that if the author doesn't reveal something until the final chapters? That's a spoiler. Yes, yes - I saw it coming at a certain point - but I would have seen it coming a lot sooner had I decided to read the back cover blurb before I started the book (which, hello, a lot of readers do).

In the end this just didn't work all that well for me. I tore through it mainly to be done with it and see how the heck the author was going to get her Idiot Heroine Of Bad Decisions out of trouble, but that was the only reason. Too frantic, too frenetic, just too too. As much as I loved the first book, this one might have killed my interest in the dysfunctionally corrupt Draycott Academy.

Final Grade = D

This was so drama drama drama and I don't think it was done very well. I think it was very over the top and just was not realistic when it came to teens and decisions they made. I think yes teens can have drama and etc, but this was just too much.

I love a YA thriller and it's so fun to see Sutanto continue to write them. This was a nice follow up to The Obsession, but I don't think they need to be read in order. I also really enjoyed the dark academia aspect to it. Had a great time.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I enjoyed The Obsession so I was looking forward to The New Girl. I enjoyed this a lot, and really liked that it was a fast paced read. I found this to be quite an interesting concept, it just needed to be fine tuned a little bit. I liked that there were some really unexpected moments in this. However, the characters were somewhat unbelievable and I found it hard to relate to them for the most part.

Predictable but still fun teen whodunnit set in one of my favorite YA locations: a super duper fancy prep school for super duper fancy rich kids. Yes, you will totally be able to figure out what is happening about halfway through but is still worth picking up as a beach read or a fun "brain candy" kind of book.

Prestigious boarding school, new girl on a scholarship, jealousy, intrigue, bullying, and a sense that all that glitters isn't gold... The New Girl by Jesse Q Sutanto doesn't deliver much "new" for someone who has been around the block a time or two, but the target audience very much seems to be on the younger end of YA (13-17 would be my suggestion) and for them it should hold up pretty well!
As I am clearly not the target audience, I will give the book a solid 3/5 and hand it off to my 14 year old who will surely find the characters more relatable and the drama less over-dramatic than I did.

I adore Sutanto's thrillers, and this was no exception—gripping, character-driven drama.. Couldn't put it down!

This was a chilling thriller and I loved it! It was so different than her Aunties series and I really enjoyed it. The characters were entertaining and the writing really sucked me in from the beginning.

Oh, I really enjoyed reading these books! I actually got both of these books as ARCs before they were released, but they kinda slipped my mind-until her Dial A for Aunties books brought them to my attention. And I'm so glad that they did, they were so thrilling and entertaining!

These are both set at Draycott Academy. The Obsession came out first, but The New Girl was set beforehand, the drama that was referenced about the previous year. And we briefly see Logan at the beginning of New Girl, what with the taking away of his first female obsession, Sophie.

Both of these books have some pretty rage-inducing scenarios. A parent's significant other being abusive, but also a cop. A stalker. Rich, privileged girls who don't like the space you're taking at the school, and the methods of bullying. A corrupt school. Urgh!

I felt for the both of these girls, they were just both in awful situations. Some of their responses to these situations is technically and morally wrong, but it was against these awful people, and it was so great to see them get some comeuppance! They were both really satisfying mystery thrillers!

Loved reading these books and I can't wait to read more by Jesse Q. Sutanto!

I have a lot of thoughts. I'm honestly unsure if I'm going to keep this at three stars or drop it later. This is for a number of reasons I examine later.

First off, murder is bad, but I get why all this happened the way it happened. I think the circumstances through which Jesse Q. Sutanto examines moral greyness and murder are interesting and often complex. What felt frivolous in Dial A, felt inevitable here for a number of reasons - adults unwilling to help and listen, bullies who don't mind destroying people to make themselves feel bigger, and terrible, terrible rage.

I really liked the first half of the book. I felt like I was buried in Lia's anxiety. Between the bullying, the fear of getting kicked out, and the need to make sure she never does, there was a lot of pressure on her. Plus, being the fish out of water really affected how she got on with a much richer crowd, who saw her as valuable as the dirt beneath her shoes. The way her anxiousness is captured was fantastic and immersive. While that was maintained through the second half of the book, I found her oscillating more between what was necessary, what she wanted, and what was justified and I couldn't say that I agreed with her as much on a lot of points, but I also understood why and that made the descent somehow worse.

I found the way this book examined a broken, classist system to be very interesting. The system was rigged against Lia before she even stepped onto campus, but the way it kept failing her at every turn was infuriating and it made everything that came later justified. I wanted to yell at her to say something, to do something different, but as Lia said, they all made their choices.

In the end, I was disappointed by the second half and how it all fell apart. I'm not sure what I had expected, but this felt the same as my disappointment and conflicted feelings around the finale of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. I understood, but I couldn't support it. It definitely made me think though, so here we are.

All in all, I loved the Indonesian rep and the inclusion of Lia and Danny enjoying and basking in their culture together. This wasn't the book I had been expecting, but I enjoyed it well enough. If you're into thrillers and people trying to think their way out of bad situations, this is a good book to pick up. As with Dial A, it wasn't the writing that turned me off, but specific plot points themselves that weren't for me.

Rep: Half Native Indonesian, Half Chinese Indonesian FMC, Chinese Indonesian MMC, lesbian secondary character

TW: classism, bullying, racism, inter-racial racism, drugs, overdose, death, cyberbullying, physical assault, injury detail, vomit; mentions HP, eating disorder

Plot: 2.5/5
Characters: 3/5
World Building: 4/5
Writing: 4.5/5
Pacing: 3/5
Overall: 3/5

eARC gifted via NetGalley by Sourcebooks Fire in exchange for an honest review.

I found this one to be a bit of a try-hard. There are too many elements. The plot is all over the place and the concepts aren't properly integrated. Not engaging enough to be worth the effort.

I am not sure why but it felt likes I had read this book before. The entire time I was reading it I was having de ja vu. Still don't know what other book I read that made me feel like that. But I liked this book a tiny bit more than The Obsession.

Great book and enjoyed the characters . loved the slight romance and the how well the group worked together. Overall a great book . I would read this author again.

This book ended up being a DNF. Rating is based solely on the content I did read. I ultimately found the pacing and development of the story and/or characters not engaging enough to continue on and finish the complete book.

THE NEW GIRL was a good book. Sutanto is one of my favorite authors but I just don't think YA is really for me. Loved the dark academia and mystery vibes but the book read really young to me. If I was ten or more years older I think I would've loved this book.

Rating: 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4).

Thank you, NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire, for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Boarding school ✔️ mean girls ✔️ scandals ✔️ not knowing who you can trust ✔️ Dark Academia- absolutely.

If there is one thing I love, it is a book set in a boarding school. I think this one was just a little too camp for me. It kind of reminded me a watching an episode of Sabrina- where things start off somewhat believable and then quickly land in far-fetched land.

The main character has never fit in and wants to prove herself. She's never really fit in. She sees a girl being taken but everyone else is acting like it didn't happen. Weird stuff keeps happening (think Pretty Little Liars) You know really know what's going on, but it keeps getting ridiculous. I enjoyed it enough, but it wouldn't be at the top of my list to recommend to a friend.