Rating: 4 stars
CBR18 Bingo: Season (this is set in the autumn/fall in New York, the word 'fall' is literally in the title and there is an actual literal 'season' - like in Regency England, for the rich prep school kids in the story)
Thank you to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for this ARC. My opinions are my own. This book will be released on the 29th of September
Julia Lowell can't believe how much her life changed, almost overnight. One day, she was in her small Nebraska town, heartbroken because her boyfriend Will had found someone else, the next, she's living in a gorgeous building on the Upper West Side in New York City, the beneficiary of a will no one in her family knew about. The reclusive old man her family had been delivering groceries to for years, who occasionally came to their holiday celebrations, left them not only his stunning building in New York, but a fortune of millions of dollars. However, to secure the inheritance, Julia, her twin brother Liam and her parents have to live in New York for at least six months, and Julia and Liam have to enrol in a fancy private high school for the same amount of time.
Unfortunately, while Julia was never exactly popular back in Nebraska, and her tiny group of friends got even smaller once Will left her for another girl, at Gardenwood, most of the filthy rich student body are like starving hyenas, and Julia is a tasty and wounded gazelle. To make matters worse, her brother Liam seems to instantly settle in, charming everyone and making friends. Julia, on the other hand, has two girls in the entire school not treating her like a pariah, and is barely passing maths. Low test scores could get her expelled from the school, jeopardising one of the clauses in the will instantly. The kindly headmaster promises to discreetly arrange for a tutor to help her.
If Julia wasn't utterly desperate, she would never accept help from Damion Rutledge, the boy whose nose she nearly accidentally broke during their first meeting, before Julia and Liam had even started school. Damion is the great-nephew of the man who left the Lowells a fortune, and he and his parents refuse to believe that the old man wasn't scammed by a bunch of money-grubbing country bumpkins. Damion hates the idea that strangers are living in the house his great-uncle had one day promised him, and wants to figure out how exactly a family of complete strangers inherited the majority of Uncle Remington's wealth. Tutoring Julia in maths allows him to enter the house he so misses, while investigating what the Lowells might have done to scam his uncle. He also gets to tease Julia, which is quickly becoming his favourite thing in the world.
Because it needs to be kept secret that Damion is tutoring Julia in maths, none of the other students at Gardenwood knows exactly why he keeps spending so much time with her. Rumours are flying around school, and sadly, they make the mean girls all the more determined to put Julia in her place. Of course, the more time Damion actually spends with Julia and observing her family, the more he discovers that they are probably much more worthy recipients of his great-uncle's fortune than his already wealthy and status-obsessed parents. He also seems to be falling for Julia, the girl he had declared his enemy...
I have heard a lot of good things about several of Lynn Painter's YA books, and bought some of them in e-book sales these last few years. However, this ARC of her most recent book is the first one I've actually read. This makes me feel more optimistic with regard to the ones I have from her backlist.
Julia is introverted and clearly suffers from social anxiety, something it appears no one in her family really appreciates. They seem to think she exaggerates her discomfort. She is smart and well-read and while she considers herself stupid when it comes to maths, it's also clear from how quickly she improves from Damion's tutoring, that she just needed the subject explained to her in a different way. She is both excited and terrified about the idea of moving to New York, having consumed so much media focused on the city.
She certainly does not deserve to be treated the way she is by almost everyone at her school, and she is a stronger person than me for putting up with so much harassment for so long. Considering how protective her brother comes off about her in the last quarter or so of this book, I am rather surprised that he doesn't notify anyone about all the crap his twin is subjected to. Yes, it's clearly a condition of them getting the inheritance that the twins attend the fancy school for six months, but there is nothing legal anywhere that says they're not allowed to tell the school's management about all the bullying that Julia is subjected to. That her brother just happily seems to settle in with his little circle of friends, without telling his parents, their legal adviser Bernard or the headmaster about Julia's problems, makes me think less of him.
Damion is clearly a worthwhile person deep down, although it is hidden under a lot of privilege and snobbery. He initially wants to hate the Lowells because he believes they conned his Uncle Remington somehow, and he believes they have what he had expected would one day be his. Julia becomes the target of most of his focus, since he is asked by the headmaster if he can tutor her to improve her maths skills. While part of him wants her to suffer and fail, he is also fascinated by her, and helping her with her schoolwork will also allow him to spend time in the house he has so many happy memories of. He claims to not care what anyone thinks of him, and since he is rich, handsome and popular, the gossip about him and Julia doesn't negatively impact him in any way, while it makes her social standing even more precarious.
Thankfully, Damion, who comes off as a bit of a spoiled and entitled jerk to begin with, does a lot of growing as a person throughout the book. Julia doesn't really need to change, but Damion comes to see that Julia is right about him, and that while he refuses to join any of the judgemental cliques of the school because he's such "a rebel", he also doesn't condemn their words or behaviour. For the second half of the book, he improves considerably, and he proves himself a master of the grand gesture in the end.
I think I'm far too Scandinavian and socialist for most of the rich people shenanigans throughout this book. Instead of prom, they have a series of social events, ending in an actual high society ball, complete with elaborate costumes. That sort of nonsense doesn't appeal to me, although as a reader of historical romance, who doesn't like it when the hero sees the heroine in a gorgeous gown and goes weak at the knees because of it? That part was nice. My favourite parts were when Julia goes back to Nebraska, away from the stress and mistreatment in New York, to a much nicer environment in her old hometown. Her cousin and friend seemed lovely and very supportive, and even her ex-boyfriend eventually realised that he had behaved badly towards her (without ever wanting her back - no one wants that).
I was unsure of where this was going at first, mainly because Damion was a hard character to read, whose constant teasing of Julia seemed more like manipulation than flirting. In a good romance, the characters change because they see that it is necessary, not because they are asked to, or rescued by the love of a good love interest, and that is what happens here too. By the time he and Julie actually kiss, I was absolutely hooked. I'm glad I followed my whim and requested this ARC. It was a delightful autumnal read.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
