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More like 3.75 stars. Also reviewed .

Reading this book was a slightly strange experience for me for several reasons.
1. It's set in Melbourne.
2. It's set in the 1990s.
3. It's set in a private girls' school.

I attended a private girls' school in Melbourne in the 1990s, so there was a lot about the story that felt frighteningly familiar. I could relate more than I liked to the parts of the story about teenage girls tormenting teachers and the rest of the class going along with it, to the parts about Lucy feeling better about herself when she's alone, to the parts about dancing to Spice Girls songs at socials with a brother school.

Obviously, I'm not Chinese, I wasn't born in Vietnam, I didn't come to Australia by boat, and I wasn't a scholarship girl from the western suburbs. As much of Lucy's story was unfamiliar to me as was familiar. But the parts that were familiar definitely didn't make me pine for my high school days, that's for sure.

This isn't always an easy read. Our protagonist, Lucy, tells the story of her first year at Laurinda in a series of letters addressed to Linh, an often mysterious and largely unseen character. The way Lucy talks about Linh was confusing to me at first, and I struggled to make sense of their relationship. But about three quarters of the way through the book, everything fell into place. (view spoiler)[Linh is Lucy's Chinese name and she is, in fact, writing to herself. She sees herself as two distinct entities. Linh is the rough-as-guts western suburbs girl who's not afraid to stand up for herself, to tell people to get the hell out of her way, the one who knows exactly where she fits in with her family and her social group and her school as a whole. In contrast, Lucy is the outsider, the girl who's struggling to keep her head above water, who's struggling to make friends. She's stuck between two worlds - the elite opulence of Laurinda and the houses of her fellow students, and the world she grew up in. She starts to see the things she's always loved - the way her family have always eaten dinner on newspapers on the floor, her parents slurping loudly as they eat, their house and their furniture, her possessions - as disgusting and tacky and embarrassing. Linh is, essentially, the part of herself that she doesn't want to admit exists when she's at Laurinda. (hide spoiler)]

There were times when the story felt like it went on for a little longer than was necessary, like it was taking far too long to get to the point. There were only so many times I could read about Mrs. Leslie and her white saviour complex without wanting to scream, and I reeeeeeeeeally could have done with less of the Evil Trio of Doom. That said, I kind of wished we'd seen more of Lucy and her friends from her old life than just the occasional encounter on the train.

On the whole, it was an enjoyable book dealing with some serious issues regarding identity in teenage girls.