Frat Girl Book Review

I just finished reading Frat Girl by Kiley Roache and I absolutely loved it. I read it so fast and couldn’t wait to publish my Frat Girl book review. Keep reading to find out if reading this book is worth it!

Plot

Frat Girl written by Kiley Roache follows the story of Cassie, a soon-to-be college freshman who gets to go to her dream college. The catch? The paid scholarship she receives requires her to conduct a research project over the span of her whole first year. And what better topic to research than to go undercover in Delta Tau Chi, the most sexist fraternity on campus.

What seems like it will be the ultimate takedown of a frat that should have been disbanded long ago becomes complicated as Cassie begins to form relationships – friendly and romantic – with the guys. Will she be known as a feminist hero or will she be known as a liar?

Review

Personally, I loved this book. I have always been interested in sororities whether it be books, movies, or even research papers I write for school, so this book was right up my alley. I read it within 48 hours because I seriously could not put it down. There were so many great qualities of this book that made it such an easy and entertaining read.

First of all, Cassie is a smart, strong, and brave female character. What kind of girl would be so brave as to rush a fraternity? Also, while she keeps up with her schoolwork she also stays on schedule with her research project.

 However, her intentions behind the project are a bit awry at times and this is where the flaws of the book come in to play. In the beginning, she claims to be a feminist who wants to get rid of toxic masculinity. Cassie believes the best way to do this is to get the frat disbanded, but getting rid of one problematic frat does not get rid of them all. It only solves a temporary problem.

Another factor is that Cassie has a bit of a bias, but never acknowledges it. She lives in the frat house with the boys once she joins the fraternity as this is the best way for her to get the behind-the-scenes information for her research. The longer Cassie lives with them, the more the boys grow on her and she begins to develop friendly and romantic relationships. These friendships that she has sometimes deterred her from writing the whole truth about the goings-on in the frat house, which means she leaves some crucial information out of her research project.

The novel also features a bit of fake feminism. Cassie claims to be a hardcore feminist throughout the novel and that is why she is trying to get the sexist fraternity disbanded, but sometimes her beliefs do not hold true.

For most of the novel, she judges her roommate without even knowing her because she joins a sorority. She even says that her roommate can’t be a feminist because of this and that sorority girls are fake. Eventually, Cassie acknowledges that she was wrong to think this, but she was never held accountable for expressing these beliefs.

One last flaw is that hazing and binge drinking are mentioned frequently in the book, but they are never written about in a negative light. It is almost seen as normal behaviour. Throughout the novel, certain chapters will be written as Cassie’s field notes, but they never once discuss the culture of drinking in frats. I think it would have been extremely effective for Cassie to recognize all of the fraternity’s flaws instead of picking and choosing. 

Overall, with the negatives aside, I would highly recommend this book. I enjoyed the book so much that the flaws didn’t even occur to me until after I had finished reading it and was reading other people’s reviews.

I think the storyline and the messages in the book are great, and while it is a bit of a longer book, it was very easy to read. I would give it a 10/10 and I would definitely re-read it in the future.