Unfortunately ended up comparing Frat Girl to a book by Riley Redgate that had sort of a similar premise, but I much preferred, and this just couldn't hold up to it.

This book was soooo great! I couldn’t put it down and finished it in one sitting. I really liked the romance but especially liked the ‘siblinghood’ between Cassie and the brothers. Really fun read with actual feminist criticism sprinkled throughout.

I love books set in university and I'm fascinated by fraternities, but this didn't work for me. I didn't like the protagonist, who claims to be a feminist - and that's kind of the whole point of the book - but Cassie is a girl-hating girl. It didn't work.

One of my favourite books of the year. A really smart, thoughtful and beautifully written contemporary book.. I featured this in a Pop Sugar UK article, linked below.

I enjoyed this. I liked the story, the aspects of everyday feminism in the modern day. And I loved how she was completely blown back by her ideas and she was learning throughout the story. Being a feminist in the modern world can sometimes be hard to navigate, especially when you have clear ideas of what is right and wrong. So I enjoyed that this book challenged most peoples perceptions.

Actual rating 3.5

I had a hard time rating this but came out at 3.5 because, despite the growth and progression of the frat boys (which I loved), Cassie took way too long to show any character growth and when she did it just felt like a huge jump with next to no nuance.

I also found Cassie's view of feminism to be incredibly limited and she judged other girls incredibly harshly, especially her room mate Leighton, who showed significantly more growth than Cassie did through the book. Cassie consistently demeaned sorority girls, thinking she was better than them because she was only a member of a frat for a social experiment despite the fact that she liked living there.

Cassie only recognises that the boys in the frat are actual humans worthy of more than just the title 'frat boy' when she sets her friend up with one of them as another experiment and Jackie points out that he's actually a decent guy, something Cassie hadn't even considered.

When Cassie did start to recognise that the boys were more than just their label, the book improved for me and they clearly all learnt a lot from each other. I enjoyed the non-partying socialising in the house when the frat ate together or had a sex-ed lesson from Cassie. This was when their dynamic was at its best.

Cassie's eventual transformation from frat hater to frat lover was extreme. There was little discussion of the grey area, which was obviously huge. I appreciate this is because she'd grown to be friends with the guys but some of her experiences were incredibly negative, especially towards the end when her diaries were released. Specifically the situation with Bass, which was handled well by the frat but not so well by the author in my view. The conclusion was too simple in the ALL FRAT BOYS ARE AMAZING

I enjoyed the romance, it was cute and worked well for me- especially as Jordan really did respect Cassie's opinions and choices. Actually, after the first 35%, most of the interactions with the guys in the frat were brilliant and their slow burn friendships ended up being pretty impactful.

Overall, this is a pretty good book and I'll definitely look out for more by Kiley Roache, just hoping her writing becomes a little more nuanced

"Mean Girls", but with a fraternity is the best way to describe this one. Honestly, I couldn't get into it. I liked what it had to say about feminism and there were some great observations about university culture (wow, I learnt a lot about frats reading this one). But I just couldn't get into it. Cassie wasn't a particularly likeable main character and I couldn't really root for any of the frat boys either: the redemption arc for them didn't seem totally believable and I couldn't buy into them being awful to women one moment, but then being responsible human beings a few pages later. But I suppose, that's kind of the point of this one, to expose all the morally grey issues present. That being said, there are definitely some fun scenes here: I really did enjoy Cassie deciding to give an impromptu sex-ed class in the frat house.

I didn't find anything 'feminist' about this book. The protagonist was quick to judge other women and I found her definition of what being a 'feminist' is unusual, as well as her judgement of all the men in this book too. I didn't click with the characters either and the pacing felt a little slow for my liking, I wish there was a little more humour in the book too which may have kept me going but I lost interest (the only humour was the negativity towards the sorority girls, which I didn't find funny).

I wish I liked this book a lot more as it had real potential but it fell flat for me.

Such an influential book. I absolutely loved it. It deals with feminism in a way I haven’t read before. It was hilarious and heart warming. Amazingly addictive read, with some great characters. I loved it.

I don't read a lot of YA - aside from ALL of Louise O'Neill's books, but I was so sold on the premise of Frat Girl and couldn't wait to read it. ....In order to attend the university of her dreams, Cassie Davis needs a scholarship - so she pitches an intriguing project - to pledge to a fraternity and live there undercover to reveal the truth of their misogynistic behaviour. Except Cassie doesn't get the results she expects....to fall for one of her fellow frat bros, who isn't the stereotype she assumes.

I really enjoyed Frat Girl. It was a pacy, interesting read. Challenging our perceptions of feminism and greek life stereotypes. I liked that Cassie didn't have all the answers and her assumptions were challenged - and that she wasn't supposed to represent the view of *all* women eg the other female characters - her friends, her mother etc. In some ways I wish the author had gone a little further, or made it a little grittier as I felt it was all very neatly sewn up at the end - when real life isn't always like that. But given the age of the author, this was a fantastic read and I'll definitely look out for more from her!

Thanks to #netgalley for this proof.

Cassie is on a full scholarship to one of the best colleges in the country. All she needs to do to keep it is; join a fraternity, conduct a social experiment on her frat “brothers” without being found out and then write about the sexist and misogynistic behaviour of these frat brothers in an exposè - simple!
However what Cassie doesn’t bargain on is how it will FEEL to join a fraternity, conduct a social experiment on her frat brothers and then write an exposè that may get the frat house shut down permanently. She also doesn’t bargain on finding love.

For me Frat Girl was a mixture of some good and some bad. There were elements of the story I really enjoyed and others that didn’t ring true for me.

I liked the idea and the storyline, it’s what initially attracted me to this book. The story of a young girl with strong feminist views joining a frat full of sexist boys was interesting and I wanted to see how it would play out.

I particularly liked Roache’s writing style, which I thought was fluid and free flowing.
The characters were well written and mostly well developed. Now this doesn’t mean all the characters were great, but I did like Peter and Duncan as I thought they offered more than I expected. Cassie was great in parts but contradictory in others which meant that although on the whole I liked her, there were times that she annoyed me.
The slow burn romance between Cassie and Jordan was really sweet and handled well however again even though Cassie is a feminist she talks an awful lot about how good looking he is and how hot his body is!

One of the main things about Frat Girl that I didn’t like was how quick Cassie was to judge the sorority girls despite being a feminist. She also then didn’t re-evaluate her opinion of them even though she readily admits not all frat boys are the same. I found this side of the story contradictory and it made Cassie a hypocrite in my opinion.

Overall I enjoyed this book and would rate it 3.5 stars.

Thank you to the NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy. All opinions are my own and provided willingly.

Any book that weighs in on gender related themes has a real task on its hands. When I saw the blurb for Kiley Roache’s ‘Frat Girl’ I was coloured incredibly interested.

I LOVE college-set stories. So it gets a big tick for that. Then you look at what the premise is… A girl pledging to become a member of a frat house as part of an undercover expose type affair, to keep her full-ride scholarship at the college she’s been desperate to go to… It just sounds like a fun, and intriguing plot. Right?

And yeah, it is, actually. I thought that the plot itself was good. I thought the characters themselves, were good. And overall, the book was good!

But here’s the but, because I’m not going to gloss over any buts, no matter how big or small they are. All buts matter.

I think the exploration of sexism, feminism and gender roles gets itself confused. If I’m being honest, it ties itself into the same kind of knots that I myself get into when I try and pick apart societal themes when it comes to the place of women and what equality can, and should actually mean.

And I feel like ‘Frat Girl’ takes a lot of these things head on, in a very intelligent way. Plus the story isn’t compromised for the sake of getting in a particular point. However, there are long passages of feminist theory and gender studies that just… Ah. It’s not that I’m NOT interested because I unequivocally am. But I didn’t pick up a piece of fiction for a hard sell of the science. You know? It’s like getting into a SF book and then being bombarded with astrophysics. It’s just not what I came here for.

What this book does is a beautiful job of asking questions, and having the reader ask questions.

I thought that ‘Frat Girl’ was bold and gutsy but was not the biggest fan of the ending, I think if you’re going to tow a certain line throughout a book then you gotta live up to that at the finish too. But, you know, I do understand the need to tie up the ends and end it on a positive (if not a bit HEA) note.

It did make me think a little of the Life and Death Brigade from ‘Gilmore Girls’. The way Rory slotted in with those lads (and some of them, most of them, err, all of them were on the douchebag spectrum) made for an interesting dynamic. And I think Cassandra and her lads in ‘Frat Girl’ had a similar effect.

Maybe it’s just the morose martian living inside me, but I really wanted the full of effect of that expose to be realised. Like, you know, having to truly face the fact that she’s betrayed all these guys she’s grown to know and some even can be called friends. The fallout from that kind of deceit would be MASSIVE. And it wasn’t. That’s not to say bridges are burned forever, but I would have liked to have seen her struggle with that conflict more.

For me, I felt most empowered by the handling of sexual agency and the emphasis that women can, and should, also be allowed to express themselves sexually without being made to feel like they’re “sluts” or “whores” for doing so. I don’t think we’ll see that perspective shift for a long time, but I like to see it addressed.

Basically ‘Frat Girl’ is a good read. It’s easy to sink into and overall I enjoyed the story. If you enjoy college-set books, and/or explorations of modern feminism then definitely give it a go.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. Firstly as soon as I started reading the story I knew that I had made a mistake in choosing to do so. When reading the synopsis I liked the idea of an 'undercover' aspect but once I started it just felt wrong, I felt uncomfortable reading what the MC Cassie was doing, especially as it was an official study connected to the University.

Also the story read very confused to me. Was this book about the problems with society towards feminism versus toxic masculinity or a fluffy romance?

The slow burn romance was sweet and well-written. There were also many interesting characters in the book that I enjoyed and liked, especially Duncan, Bambi and my favourite Peter.

However the more serious part of the book had it's problems. There was a lot of 'feminism for beginners' text which was really dry and totally pulled you out of the story. We also had a problem with the MC who claims to be a feminist, and in my eyes is a subject that at the bottom of it all is about accepting and treating people the same regardless, but was quite judgemental. Either assuming that all men in the frats were bad and surprised to find out that they are not all the same or being incredibly derogatory about sorority girls.

To say that her study was supposed to be about an insight into fraternity life and what needs to change, Cassie really didn't have that many original thoughts on the matter. Peter's statement was way more interesting than anything Cassie produced.

It was an interesting read though, and has the reader thinking about important issues.

A fun read that talks about serious talk in this book, the writing is good but I didn't really enjoy the characters that much as I usually but it kept me interested because of the subject matter.
I tend to read a lot of YA and most tend to be high school kids so reading about college-aged students instead was a refreshing change for me.
Overall for me it was a light summer read and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun quick read

From the blurb I really wanted to love this book, unfortunately I didn't.
I'm a fan of YA and I pictured this story to be something in between "Never been kissed" and "She's the man" but actually I really struggled to connect to the characters and in my opinion the plot as whole was weak and predictable and I have to force myself to finish it.
I liked all the academic extracts and social considerations and I think the topics emerging from the book were interesting and certainly actual, something that's worth discussing and writing about, but possibly this book is one of those YA that fits well only with the teenagers crowd so take my opinion with a pinch of salt as I finished Uni a long time ago :)

My problem was mainly the fact that I disliked Cassie from the get go, and given the first person POV that made it hard to keep reading on. She is not very inspirational and most of the time she just came across (to me) as a repressed teenager that was finally let off the leash and not much of the feminist she thought herself to be. So many of her opinions and judgments were surprisingly quite reactionary in fact, I'm still wondering if the author wanted to actually show "how NOT to be a feminist" with her portraying of Cassie.
The other characters were a bit of a stereotype with little depth to them, there back stories were a paragraph long at best so really it was quite hard to get to like them.

Thanks to HarperCollins and Netgalley for the ARC.

This book is fantastic. I love seeing YA based around college-aged students and this did not disappoint. I love how Cassie is problematic and seems like a genuine person.

Every year there seems to be a trend in YA contemporary and it seems like 2018 is the year for feminism, something I am very happy about. As soon as I read the blurb for this I knew I wanted to read it. I loved the premise, college girl joins a frat to prove they're the source of all evil, as it sounds like such an interesting and different take (and I thought it would be a fun read with a bit of a message).

Unfortunately however the author doesn't quite pull it off. It's not a bad book, in fact it does have some great moments, I just never seemed to connect with any of the characters or even the story. Consequently I didn't particularly care whether Cassie would succeed or fail in her mission to expose them or cure them.

I think the biggest problem is that it gets so bogged down in the theory and concepts that I just lost interest. There are too many occasions of characters going off into long monologues on various feminist theories. It didn't feel natural to me and if I'm honest bored me so much that I found myself skimming through those sections.

I also felt like Cassie was kinda preachy and judgemental. She does grow as a character but I never really took to her or felt like I got to know her. Similarly best friend Alex could have been such a brilliant character but was never fully fleshed out and again spent most of her time giving long monologues on feminism or being kinda judgy and selfish (I don't think I'd want her as my best friend). There is some romance in this (be warned it is of the insta love variety) but again I'm afraid I didn't feel it.

In terms of the writing, it's ok. It has the odd moment but generally I felt like the whole thing could have been shorter, tighter and with a lot more emotion.

It is fantastic to see books dealing with these themes and concepts and particularly wonderful that this book brought in intersectionality and issues around race and sexual orientation as well as gender. I just kinda wish the author had found some way to hook me into the story.

There's potential there, it just didn't work for me. Sorry.