The Swallows

Lutz (“Spellman” series; The Passenger) makes a promising start with this super-smart and biting novel set at a Vermont prep school. Alex Witt, daughter of a jaded novelist and former Soviet fencing champ, who are divorced but still entangled, arrives to teach literature at Stonebridge Academy after a messy incident at her previous job. She ends up heading a creative writing course instead and soon learns the popular boys at the school have a secret online club that ranks the girls’s oral-sex abilities. The girls, led by misfit orphan Gemma, become aware of this and wage war against the boys, egged on by Alex. What starts out as a digital, shamey campaign turns physical and dangerous. In the battle of the entitled sexes, nobody wins and some will lose their lives. A large cast of characters and multiple narrators slows down the story, but Gemma, Alex, and a scrappy first-year named Linny come alive. The male characters—teachers, a dean, boy allies, boy villains—are less believable but good foils. The ending feels rushed and chaotic, but that’s also fitting.