Trust Falls

June 10, 2002
The first of The Wessex Papers trilogy starts off like a great beach read, full of arch observations by and about its protagonists, overprivileged teens at a highfalutin boarding school called Wessex Academy. Most of the main characters belong to the elite clique known as ABs, or Alumni Brats. Sunday and Allison show up to the headmaster's welcoming party wearing—horrors—the same Lily Pulitzer dress; once-preppy Hobson has come down with "I'm-From-The-Hood Syndrome" ("His baggy pants hung low. He flashed signs for nonexistent gangs. His friends became his 'dawgs' "); Noah, the smart-mouthed slacker, dreams up a plan for a "guerilla barbershop quartet" to be called The Schwa Sound ("You know, after that little upside-down E
that dictionaries use"). But wit quickly gives way to sophomoric plotting. The overextended story line involves conspiracies among corrupt faculty members; illicit sex (the new English teacher seduces Noah); and tedious roommate squabbles and romantic tiffs. In a bizarre closing twist, a non-AB and Sunday (who team up to "take the BS out of boarding school") peek through the headmaster's window late one night and spy him and a student watching a porn movie starring Noah. The story resembles a drifting soap opera, complete with dangling plot lines, and readers are not likely to tune in to the next installments. Ages 12-up.

July 1, 2002
Reviewed with other titles in the Wessex Papers series.

Gr. 8-12. Unlike many paperback teen series titles that feature a self-contained story in each volume, the Wessex Papers series uses three volumes to tell one long, involved mystery. The first volume, "Trust Falls," uses a lot of pages to introduce the main characters, including Sunday Winthrop (old-money rebel) and Fred Wright (middle-class rebel), and the complex social world of the ultrasnobbish Wessex Academy. Things pick up in "Fallout," in which Sunday and Fred reveal their feelings for one another and discover an extortion scheme that reaches to the upper levels of the school administration. In the final volume, Sunday and Fred unmask the blackmailers and make their school more fair and just. Of course, most mysteries are fewer than 750 pages, and the story gets rather messy and convoluted in places. Yet many young readers will find a thrill in the vicarious plunge into the world of Wessex Academy, where the students indulge in all sorts of teenage vices (including some nonexplicit sex and drug and alcohol use) and sneak around the campus at night in their underwear and J. Crew pajamas. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)