This new release from the author of Dial A for Aunties had some high points, but overall it was a miss for me.

WHAT I LIKED
- I'll always love a dark academia vibe!
- There were a few incredible well-written conversations about race and biases, specifically in reference to Asian stereotypes.
- The fast pace definitely kept me reading!

WHAT DIDN'T WORK FOR ME
- The pace was almost too fast. A typical teenager ends up embroiled in drug dealing, murder, blackmail, etc all within the first half of the book. I'd compare it to Pip's entire character arc from all 3 A Good Girl's Guide to Murder books being condensed down to a few chapters. It felt rushed and unrealistic.
- The characters also felt unrealistic. They were so extreme in their dialogue and antics that they seemed shallow and cartoonish.

You may love this book even if I didn't, so please give it a chance if the description interests you!

The New Girl
by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Pub Date: 01 Feb 2022
Lia has just earned a track scholarship to a prestigious high school, one she otherwise could never afford. Being the new girl isn't easy, especially when everyone around you has loads of money and you have, well...none. Lia knew she might not fit in, but when she turns out to be the fastest on the track team, bumping one of the most popular and meanest girls from Varsity, she becomes a much hated target. Couple that with the most gorgeous eligible bachelor on campus falling for her and Lia becomes a social outcast thanks largely to a hateful rumor app on campus. This is bullying to an extreme. Even her English teacher seems to be in on it, giving her a failing grade for excellent work while her rich peers barely bother to write a word. Just as she thinks her semester can't get any worse, she finds the body of a former student....and that becomes the least of her worries!
Enjoyable thriller. Definitely buying for my library.
#TheNewGirl
#JesseQSutanto
#NetGalley

Dial A for Aunties was such a fun read that I was excited to read another Jesse Q. Sutanto! Like DAFA, The New Girl was fast paced (SUPER fast paced), interesting, funny at times, and amusingly outlandish. The tension really gets ramped up throughout and there are quite a few mysteries to solve. It also explored diaspora feels in such a wonderful way.

I will say that the story packs SO much in that many elements (romance, relationships) felt rushed. It was hard to attach to any of the characters when everything happened so quickly. Overall, this was a fun read but I preferred DAFA. Will definitely read more by this author in the future!

3.5 maybe 4. I did really enjoy it while I read it but I couldn't connect with the main character and things she did or thought kept throwing me out of the story and ruining the flow. I guessed the twist pretty quick which doesn't necessarily ruin the book for me but I do prefer to at least be a little bit surprised. I will continue to pick up from this author if the premise intrigues me

Everyone better watch their back.. the new girl has come to town!

Lia has enrolled in Draycott with her "next Usain Bolt" track star status and scholarship. Draycott, the elite private high school with numerous acres of campus and state of the art programs. But not everything is picture perfect as Lia still comes to know. Her spot on the team is controversial and her role in the English Language Arts classroom is questionable. Once she discovers a secret about English teacher, Mr. Werner, all bets are off and gossip apps on with intensity! Readers, buckle in for a crazy ride through a semester in Lia's eyes, but watch your backs. You never know who may be watching you...

Jesse Q. Sutanto's The New Girl is a thriller that has been in the making for years. Sutanto's perseverance in getting her novel published should make readers want to pick up and dive into Draycott's world. This fast paced read had me on my toes and flipping pages to discover what Lia would do next. The characters are interwoven into the story so that no character is left behind. Overall, I recommend this story to anyone who wants a thriller or a high school drama tale with gossip girl-esque vibes. This is my first novel of Sutanto's but definitely will not be my last!

This book was hard to stop reading! I was dragged into it and I never quite knew where it was going. Excellent!

Dark academia, cat and mouse mystery in this new YA thriller from Jessie Q Surtanto. Evenly paced and well written, this novel held my interest and kept me guessing until the end.

The New Girl is a YA thriller set in a prestigious Academy, where lies come first and learning comes second.

Lia, a track star, has just earned a full scholarship to Draycott Academy. Instead of just blending in and getting by, Lia is the centre of attention for all the wrong reasons. As she starts to uncover secrets about them all, she becomes the target. Lia needs to figure out who is after her to not only save her scholarship but possibly her own life!

Jesse Q. Sutanto did a really great job of telling Lia’s story! I enjoyed the writing style, I felt that it flowed really nicely. The plot lacked for me in certain areas but overall I enjoyed this book and would recommended!

Interesting but not really my cup of tea. Well written I just personally couldn’t get into the story. A new girl at a super elite school caught in a cheating ring where everyone is against her. Predictable and honestly it was a struggle to keep my interest. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was a dark-academia YA novel that was a pretty quick read. I liked the overall storyline but unfortunately I didn’t love this one. I had a hard time connecting to the main character and her questionable choices made her extremely unlikable. The lack of a moral code for pretty much every adult and most of the students in the book was hard to swallow and caused some frustration while reading. The reveal at the end wasn’t much of a shock either.

I did like Stacy’s character and enjoyed her development throughout the story. The descriptive details about the school was well done and easy to picture the atmosphere classrooms and such. I also enjoyed the small bits of dry humor throughout.

Thank you Netgalley and Sourcebooks Fire for access to this arc.

Last year I read “The Obsession” and “Dial A for Aunties” and loved them. Both were dark, twisted, and funny. So of course I immediately requested arcs for this year’s follow-up – or in this case prequel – books for them both. As it takes place a year or so before “The Obsession,” there’s no need to read that book first. I read “The New Girl” in one day, didn’t want to put it down, but ended up with some squeamish reservations about the actions of almost everyone in the book. Yeah, even the heroine wasn’t heroic to me.

We’re back at Draycott Academy, that high school for the uber wealthy and a few charity cases to make the school look like they care about the 99%. Lia is literally The New Girl who is there on a track scholarship which she hopes is her ticket to a full ride at a top university. Her father’s Indonesian Chinese family might be sickeningly rich but as dad (who died when Lia was a child) married an Indonesian woman [gasp! the horror!], they look down on her and her mother. Lia knows she’ll be among the super wealthy at the Academy but an event on her first day there tells her that this place is a cesspool.

Still she tries to fit in as well as she can, make friends, study hard, and keep her scholarship. Soon however, things move beyond the bullying and cheating and Lia’s fighting for her life. And that’s only the start. Desperately trying to keep all the balls in the air that she’s juggling, will Lia keep her secrets as she tries to uncover everyone else’s?

The start is slow but then the pace of the story picks up to white hot. As I said, I read it in a day and had trouble putting it down. The darkness is very dark with bullying and racism (there’s an Asian social hierarchy that plays out even in school) and the children of the 1% who are used to getting anything they want. Parties in SF nightclubs with free flowing champagne and drugs, private jet trips to Las Vegas, Chanel dresses and Prada handbags, yachts – these kids have all this and more. Lia soon discovers that some of them might accept her as a friend but that the deck is still stacked against her and the school authorities only want to keep from rocking the boat.

Lia does a lot of things that made me remind myself that these situations are all new to her and she’s only a sophomore (I’m guessing she’s about 16). Still a few of the situations she enters into or lets herself be put in had me shaking my head and wondering how smart she was. Occasionally her naivete is breathtaking. Her’s is the only POV there and at times she’s unreliable at best. There are a few plot holes and inconsistencies along the way and times when things become a bit of a mess. I also guessed quite a few of the plot twists. But what really took this book down for me was the fact that despite feeling guilty at some of the things she did, Lia not only keeps doing them but also piles on some more due only to white hot rage. She moved past self preservation and justice and entered revenge territory. If there are more books set in this Draycott Academy universe, I’m not sure I want to dive into the pool of toxicity and read them. C+

I didn't love this one but I think it could just be struggling to get in the YA genre consistently. I have read several of them that I enjoy but occasionally like with this one, the characters are too immature and irritating to connect with. The storyline was interesting and the writing was good! I am just a character driven reader and struggled to care about any characters in this one.

I'm a fan of Jesse Q. Sutanto after reading her adult novel, Dial A for Aunties. I was excited to receive the ARC for her newest YA mystery. This one was a fun and thrilling ride - finished in 1 day! When Lia Setiawan arrives at her new school as a scholarship student with big hopes for a spot on the varsity track team, she realizes from day one that she doesn't fit in and wonders what she got herself into. As she begins to uncover secrets at the school, she's not sure who to trust but she is determined not to get kicked out. Then things get more serious when the danger becomes deadly. I really enjoyed this book, especially the cultural insights that Jesse Sutanto's book give us, especially the food references, the family references and the racism against native Indonesians from Chinese Indonesians.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.


Email: DaniReadsTooMuch@comcast.net
https://www.instagram.com/dani.reads.too.much/
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4725184-daniela-arena

this book was a fast paced thriller of a ride. Lia is very stubborn and strong willed as she is fighting for herself as well as what she feels is right. The author did a great job of creating characters that were multifaceted and questionable. The secrets and awful atmosphere created at this school left an awful taste in my mouth as I imagined the cruel way people can act due to race, money or some other ridiculous reason. I did move quickly through this book altho there was a point towards the latter half that I did feel moved a bit slower and I was ready for things to begin wrapping up. I was unsure of what direction we could really go with so much time left. The main conflict is revealed earlier in the book and then it is a thrilling ride as Lia navigates her way out and tries to figure out who she can trust. For me personally this is not always my fave and I wish that the descriptions and atmosphere were a bit more built up around the school and places they visited but the atmosphere she built around the vile workings of the school were amazing. I tend to also enjoy more of a mystery than a thrilling ride so this is not my ideal type of book but i still enjoyed it overall and would give it a 3.5 to 4 star rating.

I love a good boarding school mystery. I find the life of boarding schools fascinating and there is always some good mischief, secrets, and debauchery going on that make for a great story. I was very much looking forward to reading The New Girl and getting my boarding school book fix. I only wish it had lived up to my full expectations.

I want to start by saying the overall story was okay. New girl at a new boarding school filled with the children of the one percent and queue drama. It had all the points of a good story. I loved the cultural aspects a lot and learned quite a bit about Indonesian culture. I also really want to try some of the food. Sounds delicious. With that said, I was disappointed with the execution of the story. This book was jam packed with cliches. I am okay with a cliché here or there, but this was full of them. To name a few, all the kids were spoiled rich kids. There was a posse of extreme mean girls who ruled the school and everyone was scared of them. Teachers showed preferential treatment to the rich and everyone else didn’t matter. When the children told the administration about things they found, they were never believed. The cops investigation was questionable at best. The list goes on. Just a lit of things that, of course, bring angst and suspense, but too much of it in one story. It definitely allowed an intense feeling throughout the book because I was always wondering when the next shoe would drop, not if it would drop. I knew something else terrible would happen because the story just stayed on that extreme level, making it highly unrealistic. And then for things to just wrap up in this cute little bow at the end… I just was not loving it. It was okay. Even good at certain moments. I just like a bit more reality to my stories.

With all that said, I think the plot line was good and some of the characters were interesting. Beth was cool and I really enjoyed Stacey. I almost wish there was a sequel focusing on her. She was an interesting person and would make a fantastic story. Maybe her in college? I almost wish we would have gotten more of her throughout the book. The relationship between Stacey and Lia was a fun one to read.

I wanted to love this story, It just didn’t click with me like I had hoped. I do, however, plan to give another story by Jesse Q. Sutanto a try because it was a decent story and I always like to see how author’s grow over time with their writing. I also encourage everyone else to pick it up and check it out. Just because I did love, love, love it, doesn’t mean you won’t.

This was amazing. I loved every second of this. The authors writing is my favorite style. Love love love.

This was fun, but definitely a ya novel; so many times I was just screaming at her in my head. This had a large amount of twists and turns, making it a fun and fast read. Luckily, there wasn’t too many twists and a limited cast of characters, making everything easy to follow along and keep track of. But also, it was hella easy to know who was gonna end up the villain. Like, from the first chapter you had to have seen that coming.

Wow what a ride. Although the author was heavy handed on the hints to the ending, and I figured it out pretty quickly, it still was a thrilling and exciting story to read. I had anxiety the entire time! Content warning for bullying, drug and alcohol abuse, overdosing, apparent suicide, family trauma, classism, racism, some gore.

I really loved Dial A for Aunties by this author, and was really excited to read something else by her. Unfortunately, this story just didn't work for me. I really enjoyed the first half because I was curious as to what was going to happen, but overtime, it just became frustrating because the main character was very unlikable and she blamed other people for her problems, when so much of it could have been avoided. At first, this gave me Ace of Spades vibes because it deals with a lot of important issues regarding race and racism and I thought that part was really important, but in the end the story just fell flat for me because the MC was so frustrating. In conclusion, this wasn't the worst, but also not my favourite either. I tried so hard to like it, but hopefully it works out for other people : )

THE NEW GIRL by Jesse Q. Sutanto tells the story of Lia Setiawan, who transfers into an elite private school in California, Draycott Academy, on a track scholarship. While she quickly makes a few friends and meets a cute boy, some of her track teammates are not eager to make space for the new star runner, and a certain English teacher seems hellbent on flunking her--the same teacher who was involved in a bizarre incident with a student, which Lia witnessed on her first day. Lia soon finds herself wrapped up in scandal after scandal, and she has to fight to keep her scholarship, her college ambitions, her reputation, and even her life.

THE NEW GIRL is perfect for fans of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. It has an elite private school setting, dazzling night clubs and yachts, fancy cars, designer drugs, and anonymous gossipers galore. Plus, this book offers a frank view of class, race, and institutional corruption, which gives it a conscience, though the primary goal is entertainment here. The thriller of a plot is told through the quirky lens of the protagonist, giving the thriller a humorous tone, which those familiar with this author will expect and enjoy.