Frankie, you are a kick-ass girl, okay? You top my list of absolute favourite fictional girls ever (which is impressive, because I spend way to much time reading for it to be healthy) just for your sheer intelligence and determination. Congratulations!
I actually wish I was friends with someone like Frankie, no joke. Why, you ask? Because she seriously has (metaphorical) balls - even though she has the same insecurities every single other girl on the planet has.
After a miraculous transformation over the summer which leaves her with a 'knockout figure' (sigh ... as if these actually happen), Frankie finds herself with a gorgeous senior boyfriend, Matthew Livingston. But trying to fit in with his group of friends is more difficult than she expected, and she soon realises that Matthew just isn't telling her everything. Most importantly, that he's part of an all-male secret society at their boarding school. Obviously, Frankie can't join, because a) she shouldn't even know about it and b) she's not a guy. But being the kind of kick-ass girl she is, Frankie refuses to take 'no' for an answer.
Which leads to all sorts of equally ingenious and hilarious escapades.
This book began like a typical beach-read, chick-flick romance where the super lucky girl has a super great boyfriend who actually turns out to be not that great at all. But don't be deceived. This book is SO much more than that and I love it all the more for that.
Frankie is the literal embodiment of what it means to be a strong female to me - she is clever, stays true to herself without being insanely stubborn and isn't afraid to take control of things. Some of the things she says made me laugh out loud when I read them because they simultaneously made complete sense and no sense at all. E. Lockhart has done a fantastic job at making her both incredibly relatable and admirable for girls my age.
And E. Lockhart has such a flawlessly clever writing style. Discussions on society, grammar, everything was woven in seamlessly to the story, so subtly that you almost didn't realise that she was trying to address these other topics. The idea of the panopticon particularly messed with my head for a few days (in the best way, of course).
This book is about way more than it appears to be, and was all in all, a pretty amazing read.
(I apologise for this terrible summary, I really struggle to condense my thoughts that much)
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