A well-told suspenseful story with a timely message
Alexandra Witt arrives at her new job teaching at Stonebridge Academy, a private boarding school, and is immediately thrown a bit off kilter, when the class schedule she is given on the first day of class consists of a completely different set of courses than the ones she had been asked to teach. Then she finds a dead rat in her desk drawer, which she soon realizes was an omen more than an aberration. The social hierarchy at Stonebridge is ruled by The Ten, a group of male and female students who direct student social life. Alex gradually comes to realize that the male members of The Ten exert further control with a secret website called The Darkroom, known only to the boys, where participating male students plan and report on their sexual prowess. As rumors leak and spread about The Darkroom, sparks begin to fly. Alex tries to support the girls, but ultimately the situation gets out of control and produces consequences beyond what anyone could have predicted.
The Swallows is structured in short chapters written in the first person by the primary members of the cast of characters. This structure is hard to pull off well, but Lutz does it beautifully, giving each character his or her own distinctive voice and showing them as real humans. One of the most intriguing was Finn Ford, a male teacher. As I got to know Finn I veered between considering him a total jerk and a decent guy and ended up deciding he was something in between, just a flawed human like most of us. And then there is Alex Witt, the protagonist: “Some teachers have a calling. I’m not one of them. I don’t hate teaching. I don’t love it either. That’s also my general stance on adolescents.” With this as the opening line, I knew right off this book was not going to be Good-bye, Mr. Chips!
Despite the smile the opening provoked, I do not consider this a humorous book, not even “darkly humorous”. It was hard for me to “swallow” the depth of the bad behavior at Stonebridge Academy. I found it difficult to believe that the student behavior could be so bad or last as long as it did or that the authorities would be blind to the students’ activities, even in a “second-rate” boarding school for children of the wealthy, and I was not sure I wanted to read about it. Once I got past that, though, the book was beautifully done and really gripped me.
I opened The Swallows expecting enjoyable psychological suspense in an interesting setting. It was all of that and much more, with well-drawn characters and a well-delivered message (in more ways than one!).

Overall this book was just ok for me. I felt like some of the writing could have been reigned in parts. Too much info about characters that didn't really help with the plot of the story. I've read books by this author and have liked them...so maybe this was just me not clicking with the book.

Thank you NetGalley for the book. The story was not at all what I expected, especially from Lisa Lutz. While I struggled a bit a first to get into the story it soon captured my interest and was hard to put down. It was just the right amount of dark and twisty. Would recommend to others.

Darkly funny suspense, with smart, strong female protagonists (echoes of Olivia, Izzy and Rae Spellman). The plot was both timely and, sadly, perennial, although the ending felt a little abrupt? Or maybe I just enjoyed it enough to want more!

This novel was different than what I usually read, but it took me by surprise! The premise is awesome - a boarding school going through a gender war as staged by a teacher? Sign me up! While there were some slow parts, the quirkiness of the story mixed with the totally unexpected ending kept me interested. I would definitely recommend this novel to a friend!

So, Lord of the Flies, boarding school edition. A co-ed boarding school has a history of retaliation against teachers who try to shut down or even slow down a group of junior and senior boys who have a ranking system for sex acts performed by girls. The system is kept on a database called the Darkroom.

The problem is always those pesky teachers. In this case, Alex Witt, a teacher who apparently learned very little from her last confrontation with a nasty student. Once again, she sets herself up as an ally to the girls who have made it their mission to take down the Darkroom and the boys behind it.

The boarding school is actually a joke. The headmaster is clueless. He hires Alex to teach creative writing for which she has very little training and no academic experience. To say that the staff is underqualified is understating the case. The book is creepy but not creepy enough. There are too many characters to follow as how different can a bunch of high school kids be, really? They want war but don't know how to fight and the Malfoy leader of the boys is way sneakier and much more ruthless.

Had there been no adult intervention, left to their own devices these kids could have really done some mischief making beyond plotting in the furnace room as they munch licorice and text. Unforgettable, no. Good for a read on a long flight or a beach trip? Yes.

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC of this book. I like reading books which take place at boarding schools, and this was one that I enjoyed very much! The last book I read by Lisa Lutz was The Passenger, and I have also read The
Spellman Files. I enjoyed them both very much! This book was very good, and kept my interest from the first chapter. It was very suspenseful and very timely. I highly recommend it!

I’m not entirely sure how to review this book. It has some weaknesses, it slogs a bit here and there, and then there is the catastrophic ending which… I seriously feel fine about. A line near the end reminds us that while we’ve been trying to get girls to “find their voices,” in this book they stop using their voices and start taking action. Which is better? Without agreeing that what the girls did was right, I can still say that I understand why they did it. I can say that I don’t feel badly for any of these fictional male characters. I can say that I’d love to see the whole thing come alive on screen. It’s a work of fiction and I stand by my enjoyment of what happened in this fictional story.

But as I sit here trying to write the review, my enthusiasm is waning. What was the point of Ms. Witt, big picture? What was the point of several of these characters? There’s a lot going on but it’s mostly smashed together and there’s no real reason for a lot of story threads. The phrase “plausible deniability” is tossed out so many times it took me right out of the story. I read an ARC so perhaps some of those instances will get trimmed out. But… where is the rest of the school in this story?? I was wondering how the boys could have so many entries in their stupid database when there seemed to be less than 20 students, and then I remembered the school population was supposed to be around 400. Where were the other 380 students? Why did the *entire school faculty* consist of two teachers, one coach, one librarian, one dean and one very inept counselor? The world the book creates has absolutely no one else in it even though it’s stated that there are 400 kids attending this school. And I wish the Announcements sections had ended up having some sort of meaning in the story.

Overall though, no matter how many problems there were, I really really enjoyed reading this. I loved the teenage girls, especially Gemma and Linny, and I loved when they had their army ready to go. I’m basically an old woman and I’m ready to get an axe tattooed on my wrist in solidarity. I’m ready to burn things down. If this is the future for the books women (and young women) will get to read I am looking forward to it and men better take notice. Women and girls have a new type of protagonist to think about.

My 4 stars is more like 4.5 stars. I can see this as a movie, and I'd love to see the image of a pack of teenage girls with their heads shaved carrying axes on a movie poster. I would buy that poster and hang it on the wall. I wish more work had been put into cleaning the story up, but I just can’t deny that I enjoyed almost every moment and cheered at the end while hoping for the most damage possible. That doesn’t make me a bad person, that means I was totally caught up in the characters and their mission.

Final thought: Jalapenos seem like a fine real-world solution to me.

Thank you to NetGalley for the early ARC, I enjoyed it overall more than I did The Passenger (which I loved).

Alex Witt, who left her last teaching position under conditions that were too creepy for her to admit, accepts a position at Stonebridge Academy, a posh prep school in the heart of a beautiful, rural area, complete with stone buildings with literary names. She tells us (in the first of many, short, first-person chapters that alternate amongst Witt, fellow teachers, and students) that she really has no calling for teaching, especially when her assigned classes are changed against her will from literature to creative writing. However, she wants her final teaching job to end on a less bitter note, so she soldiers on.

What Alex does not know is that the bucolic setting envelops a toxic atmosphere in which stone buildings harbor often-stoned teachers and students, and that the scratchy school uniforms provide cover for a decidedly sexist, destructive undercurrent of power plays, sexual domination, and sadistic social twists.

Alternate chapters give the reader glimpses of personalities, compromises, and seething rebellions. The threads that hold teachers and students captive are controlled by "The Ten, " elite students who control the online network that functions as Big Brother, using punishments and a ratings system to demean and terrorize male and female students, and, sometimes, staff. Alex witnesses the aftermath of a photographic shaming on her first teaching day, but it takes her time to win enough trust amongst a few of the women students to try to expose the plots.

The technique of alternating first-person chapters makes it difficult for the reader (at first) to identify some characters. A sub-plot involving Alex's divorced parents does not add enough to her backstory to make a difference. Coarse language and bluntly sexual situations are so natural to the atmosphere that not all of the revelations are terribly surprising - which does not make them any less horrific. Still, I was invested in the lives and understandings of enough of the students to care how their rebellion turned out. This is not your standard prep-school-gone-bad novel.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC to review.

If women seem especially enraged these days, it's for good reason. In this story, a teacher at a boarding school learns she's in a place where the boys expect sexual favors and keep a running tally of well the girls perform in a secret digital "darkroom." As the teacher activates the girls' sense of justice, the wheels begin to fall off. Somehow the mix of satire and seriousness didn't quite work for me, perhaps because the serious theme was playing out in an implausibly awful boarding school setting. I could believe the rage of the girls, but I couldn't be convinced by the setting.

I liked this book, just didn't love it.

There is a pretty large cast of characters (though we only spend time in the minds of four of them) and I had a hard time keeping track of who was who (the "nice" guys stand out, but all of the "bad" ones just merge into one brotastic blob.) I also found some of the descriptions of the school (which seems to have no real conduct rules, hundreds of students and like 4 teachers) to be a little unrealistic.

However, there is one part of the book that is exceptional and that is THE BLOWCHART, a "should you blow him?" flowchart one of the teachers makes for the students which I've already shared online and discussed with others. I've never seen anything like it, and it's a standout part of this book that deserves to go viral in and of itself. If I could, I would make a copy of it and stick it in every high school bathroom in American.

Problem is, when I mention that the aforementioned blowchart is from a book called "The Swallows" nearly everyone gets turned off. I do NOT love the title of this book at all. I GET why it was chosen, but it makes all of the late-in-the-book discussions about "what is the last class of birds they call these young women who have engaged in a blowjob contest?" seem superfluous and silly.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed every single word of The Swallows, Lisa Lutz's latest novel, and give it 5 big stars. The story concerns a teacher at a small private prep school in New England. Alex Witt takes a job she obviously doesn't want but definitely needs, teaching Creative Writing. She is the daughter of a well-known author who has obviously pulled some strings to get her the position. After finally coming to terms with the head of the school, Alex takes up residence in an uninhabitable, but very private cottage on the school grounds where she promptly finishes off half a bottle of bourbon. I loved this character immediately!!

The school is a hotbed of teenage hormones, bullying, and cliques. At the top of the echelon are the Ten, a mix of girls and boys who pretty much run the school. One of the Ten is a girl named Gemma, a rebel who in time decides to put an end to a secret contest among the boys in the Ten known by the code word Dulcinea. The novel is told mostly from the perspectives of Alex and Gemma, but some chapters are from the POV of a skeevy male teacher (an unnecessary POV in my opinion) and two male members of the Ten who support Gemma in her quest to tilt at traditional windmills.

There are many literary references in The Swallows, including one passage where Nietzsche is misquoted by one of the boys. However, in that vein, I'd say this novel is best summarized by Herr Nietzsche's quote, "In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man."

I thought Lutz's writing was crisp and the dialogue and situation timely and on point. Her character development was spectacular, and I loved both Alex and Gemma.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for providing me a digital ARC in return for an honest review. I highly recommend The Swallows.

I had high hopes for this book, but it quickly went off the rails. The adult characters were completely unbelievable as were the kids. I did not expect this book to go the way it did. I think the author was trying to use the book to comment on present societal norms but the book got off course,

Sign me up for any book set at an elite boarding school in New England, with secret societies, myths, legends, and all the incestual themes that normally take place in these settings.

What sets this book slightly apart from its boarding school mystery peers is the strong theme of gender, very relevant in today's #MeToo world. In this case, it's a blow job challenge among the seniors of the school, all of which are monitored by "The Ten" (nothing to do with academics, everything to do with popularity). We have stereotypical characters of the rich, popular, slutty, rebellious, secretly nerdy, etc. The girls hear of this blow job contest, and slowly start to build a rebellion, gathering evidence, and decoding nicknames. I think the majority of women will identify with the overarching theme of pleasing men, not really having a choice at the time, and not fighting back. Not doing something doesn't make you lame or a tease. And that's where new teacher Ms Witt comes in. She's old enough to be taken aback by the idea of a blow job contest, with willing participants on both sides, and yet young enough to realize that another generation of women is coming of age thinking they have no power when they do. A very satisfying ending is achieved.

One tiny scene and piece of dialogue that stuck with me was a girl reading the "notes" that a guy gave her blowjob, and her response is a small, "do they. . do they even think we're human?"

This author seems to run hot and cold for me. Have loved some books, others not so much. This one was just ok for me. It's the story of female revenge against a really nasty group of "popular boys" in a boarding school who keep secret ratings about how well the girls perform blow jobs. (I know, really??)

The book could have been more tightly written without some of the extraneous details. For example, there's a back story about a main character's parents that didn't seem to add anything of importance to the plot. Same with a male teacher who was creepy, but not particularly interesting. I thought there were other superfluous characters and scenes that bogged down the story.

That being said, the final few chapters were exciting. It was a mixed bag of relief and sadness. The "boys will be boys" brotherhood finally got what was coming to them, but unexpected events caused the revenge to go far beyond what was intended.

Thanks Net Galley for allowing me to read this pre-published ARC.

Enjoyed every minute of this book. Ladies .... get ready to dive into this one and get to the bottom of the awful things happening at this coed boarding school. All of the characters have deep, creative personalities and you will love them all!

The clubbishness and secrets of a private boarding school serve as the premise for Lutz’ novel, which is told from multiple points of view. There’s a large amount of drinking to excess, a fair amount of pot-smoking, a great deal of sex and an enormous helping of looking the other way and keeping on’s mouth shut, which is the entire problem. Lutz has a keen sense of humor and a sharply critical view of misogyny.

This was a very relevant topical read. The commentary about power dynamics really made me think. I liked the style in which information was revealed, it really felt natural. A little too unrealistic at times with the complete lack of adult supervision/how scared adults were of the students. Great ending. I need my friend to read this too because I think this is a great book club discussion book!

Not sure what to make of this one. When I read the blurb it sounded like my cup of tea - a teacher trying to help break the social hierarchy which consists of boys v. girls - how could I not want to read it? And then I read it. While I liked bits of it, I found it to be too repetitive and cliched. Definitely not my cup of tea after all.

When Alex Witt accepted a teaching position at a preparatory boarding school, she never imagined she’d find herself in the middle of a gender war. But when a group of girls decide to sabotage a long tradition of male sexual predators, she seems to take on the role of unofficial advisor. But in doing so, she puts herself at risk for secrets from her own past coming to light. Readers expecting a comedic mystery similar to Lutz’s popular Spellman Files may be surprised at the dark themes explored in this novel. More than a thriller, the author explores power—between genders as well as between adults and children—and what happens when that power shifts, as well as the shattering consequences when deeply buried rage and shame break free. The book is not without humor—the girls are rather ingenious in their attempts at revenge, such as a well-timed consumption of a chili pepper—but that black humor often highlights a disturbing passivity by those who could, and should, be able to do something about the horrifying tradition of sexual abuse and bullying that is so pervasive in this insular community. This timely thriller would make an excellent selection for a book discussion group.