Beautiful Disaster (Privilege) [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Kate Brian (Author), Justine Eyre (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 18, 2009 | Series: Privilege

After wasting away in a mental institution for a year and a half, Ariana Osgood is finally back where she belongs. She has a new look, a new name, and a new life-all thanks to her former friend Briana Leigh Covington.Now enrolled as a junior at the exclusive Atherton-Pryce boarding school just outside of Washington, D.C., Ariana sleeps in Frette sheets, flirts with the captain of the crew team, and gossips with the most beautiful girls on campus. She killed to get back her life of privilege. Just how far will she go to keep it?From the author of the bestselling Private novels comes a series about the dark world of wealth, secrets, and privilege.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kieran Scott writes under the pen name Kate Brian, whose best-known books are The Princess and the Pauper, Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys, The Virginity Club, Sweet 16, Fake Boyfriend, and the prolific Private series. Several books in the Private series have been on the New York Times children's bestseller list as well as the USA Today bestseller list. Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated nearly one hundred audiobooks. With a prestigious Audie Award and three AudioFile Earphones Awards under her belt, Justine is multilingual and is known for her great facility with accents. She has appeared on stage in leading roles in King Lear and The Crucible, and has starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her recent television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

NEW FRIENDS

"Hi, I'm Briana Leigh Covington, but you can call me Ana."

Ariana Osgood stood before the trio of girls in the center of the sunlit campus of Atherton-Pryce Hall and held her breath. She felt the weight of this moment in every bone, every muscle, every tendon of her body. The very first moment of her brand-new life.

It seemed as if it had taken forever to get to this place. The stark memories of all she had been through -- the months and months locked up at the Brenda T. Trumbull Correctional Facility for Women, the hours spent planning her escape, the days on the road, wending her way west from Virginia to Texas -- all of the images and emotions crowded her brain, threatening to overwhelm her. Ariana had risked everything to get here, to earn a new chance at life. She had cheated, stolen, even killed her friend, Briana Leigh Covington, so she could assume the girl's identity and be truly and utterly free. And now she was finally here.

"Did you say 'Briana Leigh Covington'?" the tall, willowy girl asked. As if she had heard the name before. Ariana's heart stopped. Did this girl know Briana Leigh? Ariana had just arrived at this hallowed private school for the ridiculously overprivileged. Just stepped onto this gorgeous, perfectly manicured campus for the very first time. The jig couldn't possibly be up that fast.

"Yes," she said firmly, steadily. Her fingers gripped the handle on her rolling trunk a bit tighter, but not so tightly that anyone would notice. "But I prefer to be called Ana."

The girl's hazel eyes quickly flicked over Ariana's outfit, her tasteful chocolate brown Theory dress and Gucci slingbacks. They assessed her set of Louis Vuitton luggage with a glance, then slid back up to her face, lingering for a moment on her long, auburn hair, which had been dyed to match Briana Leigh's natural hue. Throughout this ever-so-brief process, Ariana grew increasingly warm, but she didn't move. This was a normal and accepted practice among her people. A girl had the right to take a moment to decide upon the value of knowing the stranger standing before her.

"Interesting," the assessor said finally, noncommittally. She glanced at each of her two friends, the impeccably groomed Chinese girl to her right, and the chunky-jewelry-loving blonde to her left. The blonde smiled almost imperceptibly, and the other girl suddenly became very interested in her BlackBerry. Ariana had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being silently mocked right to her face. Something she had done to many an unfortunate girl, but which had never been done to her.

"I'm Brigit Rhygsted," the blond girl piped up, taking a step forward and offering her hand. She had a hint of a Norwegian accent and the healthiest glow Ariana had ever seen. "This is Soomie Ahn and Maria Stanzini."

Ariana shook Brigit's hand and nodded as the other two girls said hello. For the first time in a long time, she had no idea what to say next. What did a person say to the people who might or might not be mocking her? She had no idea, and she detested the feeling. A group of younger girls walked by and called out hellos to the trio, which Maria and the others acknowledged with brief nods and vague smiles. They were paltry greetings that nevertheless elicited proud grins from those upon whom they were bestowed. Clearly, Ariana had chosen wisely. These were the girls whom all the other girls looked up to. The ones who could not be approached without an invitation. But she had approached. She had shown that she believed herself to be equal to their stature. That had to count for something.

"What year are you?" Brigit adjusted the strap on her messenger bag, and her colorful plastic bracelets clinked together.

"I'm a junior," Ariana replied. Even though she had been a junior three years ago. Briana Leigh would have been a junior, so a junior she would be. "What y -- "

"Really? Us too! Well, me and Soomie. Maria's a senior. What dorm are you in?" Brigit asked.

Ariana hesitated at having been cut off. Also something she hadn't experienced very often. "Cornwall. What about -- "

"Where did you transfer from? You have an accent. Are you from the South? Do you have any friends here? A boyfriend, maybe?" Brigit asked, lowering her voice and giving Ariana a conspiratorial look.

Ariana glanced around at the other cliques on the quad, chatting and laughing in the sunshine. Had she chosen the right crowd? There was no way she could be friends with someone who asked this many personal questions in the space of fifteen seconds. Across the way, standing on the steps of the chapel, was an olive-skinned girl with thick black hair tumbling in waves down her back, who seemed to be watching Ariana and the others from the corner of her eye while she chatted with a group of handsome guys and perfectly coiffed girls. She, too, looked like a queen bee, just as Maria had from afar. Was it possible that Ariana had aligned herself with the wrong girls? Had she already made such an awful mistake?

"I -- "

"Don't let her scare you," Soomie said, sliding her BlackBerry into the pocket of her navy blue blazer. She smoothed her already smooth black hair and lifted her chin slightly, giving Ariana a better look at the perfectly tied knot in her gold and gray striped tie. The collar of her white shirt was so starched the points looked as if they could slice through metal. "There are three things you need to know about Brigit: A) She needs to know everything about everyone; B) she has the memory of an elephant; and C) she makes excellent hot chocolate. Really. It's her thing."

A phone beeped and Maria quickly removed an iPhone from her bag. She read a text, smirked, and returned the phone to another pocket altogether. Ariana's face burned. Soomie had just put her phone away, and she couldn't shake the feeling that Soomie had just texted Maria. Were they talking about her right in front of her face?

Brigit, meanwhile, shrugged and smiled happily. Her uniform wasn't quite as impeccably kept as Soomie's. Her tie was a tad loose and her gray blazer hung open over her untucked shirt. "It is my thing," she echoed. "What's yours?"

All three of them looked at Ariana with interest. She took a deep breath. She had to stop being so paranoid. She hadn't figured out Soomie and Maria yet, but Brigit's total lack of self-consciousness was kind of sweet and endearing. Maybe even sweet and endearing enough to help her ignore the third degree. If the girl would let her.

"So, where is Cornwall, exactly?" Ariana asked, even though she knew its precise location, due to the fact that she had long since memorized the campus map.

For the last two weeks, Ariana had been holed up at the Philmore Hotel waiting for Briana Leigh's body to be found at the bottom of Lake Page, where Ariana and her former Brenda T. roommate, Kaitlynn Nottingham, had dumped it. In the meantime, she had spent hours perfecting Briana Leigh's signature, memorizing the welcome packet sent by the Atherton-Pryce Hall admissions office, and tying up loose ends -- canceling Briana Leigh's phone, which had been stolen by Kaitlynn right after the girl had betrayed Ariana; writing a breakup letter to Briana Leigh's fiancé, Téo; and securing a fake ID for herself, since she knew everyone at APH would have one.

Thanks to all that time with her nose buried in the APH map, Ariana knew that the campus was laid out in a series of circles, extending outward from the fountain, which was at the exact center of the grounds. The inner buildings -- tall and stately, constructed of red brick with white columns and ivy-covered entryways -- were the classroom buildings, the chapel, the dining hall and student center, and the administrative offices. Just beyond those, forming a wider circle, were the eight dorms -- boys' to the north, girls' to the south -- all of them three-story colonial-style homes, each with ten dorm rooms, two common-area bathrooms, and a lounge on each floor. The outermost circle was a bit more imprecise and formed by the gymnasium, the athletic fields, the theater, the arts building and the Pryce Building, which stood on the bank of the Potomac, grand and imposing, like a stern grandfather keeping an eye on the grounds. There was also a ninth dorm, Wolcott Hall, which had been built just down the hill from the Pryce Building, high enough to overlook the campus, but not high enough to appear more important than Pryce. In the brochure, it had been described in the same terms as all the other dorms, with the exception of one important adjective: "coed."

Ariana had never heard of a coed dorm on a prep school campus. She was, therefore, intrigued about its existence. But the housing office had not placed her there, and she could find out more about it in time.

"Cornwall's through here." Maria tipped her head to the side toward the surrounding buildings. Her long gold earring just grazed her shoulder as she turned around. Her uniform looked like it had been fished from the bottom of a duffel bag. Wrinkled shirt, frayed blue jacket, tie balled up and shoved into the breast pocket, pleated plaid skirt with a falling hem. And yet, she was the most beautiful and self-possessed of the three. "Follow us."

"We're all in Cornwall too. For now," Soomie offered up as they walked away from the fountain at the center of campus. "It's the oldest dorm on the grounds, which means, of course, that it was a boys' dorm for about two hundred years. Which means it still smells like sweaty socks."

Maria rolled her eyes. "It does not. You just have sensitive nostrils."

"No, your olfactory senses have simply been destroyed due to hours in the studio with dozens of perspiring dancers," Soomie shot back.

"Are you saying that I smell?" Maria asked, laying her fingers delicately to her chest.

"Oh, no, Ria. You're all roses all the time," Soomie replied with a touch of sarcasm, earning a narrow-eyed look from Maria.

"Maria is a ballerina. It's her thing," Brigit explained to Ari... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,Library - Unabridged CD edition (June 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400142431
• ISBN-13: 978-1400142439
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

More About the Author

I am a total Jersey girl. I grew up in Bergen County, went to Rutgers University, lived in Hoboken for a year (requisite post-college party time) and then moved back to Bergen, got married, and bought a house ten minutes from where I grew up. I graduated from Rutgers with a double major in English and Journalism, worked as an Editor for four years, then decided I liked writing better and struck out on my own. You've been reading my books ever since!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ding dong, the drama is gone! (Or is it?), May 27, 2009

By 

CoffeeGurl - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Beautiful Disaster (Privilege) (Paperback)

The blonde, beautiful and poetic nineteen-year-old Ariana Osgood has had quite an adventure since she escaped the mental institution she was in for murdering her ex-boyfriend. Since then, she has lied, cheated, stolen and murdered her way into a new life. Now she is Briana Leigh Covington, a sixteen-year-old redhead entering for the first time at Atherton-Pryce Hall, more exclusive than the Easton Academy, her former boarding school. She has to make a fresh start. Out with the old, in with the new. But Ariana has to encounter something she never has before: she's the new girl, the outsider. She has to kiss up to queen bees, be the butt of jokes from mean girls and set her eyes on hot guys while keeping her real identity under wraps. She is in constant alert, hoping no one would recognize her or have met the real Briana. And things get much worse what with Briana's ex-boyfriend still alive, a former flame searching for Ariana, and a fellow psycho inmate on the loose knows all of her secrets... The million-dollar question is: will Ariana have to whack more people in order to maintain this second chance at living a semi-normal life? But not all is bad. She has a chance to enter the "Privilege House," the most coveted dorm in campus. And we all know how competitive Ariana is...

This second book in the Privilege series -- a spinoff from the Private novels -- is much more enjoyable than the first one. Beautiful Disaster focuses on what made Kate Brian popular among teen readers: the privileged private school lifestyle. At the same time, it also has the mystery elements that have made Private so riveting. Ariana is definitely an interesting character, very complex and at times sympathetic, and Brian showed excellent judgment in creating a spinoff based on this character. Now that the Private novels have jumped the shark and entered the realm of bizarre and over the top, I think I will abandon those novels in favor of this one. For although Privilege is at times contrived and unrealistic, it is nevertheless very entertaining and I look forward to reading the next installment. This is a quick and fun read (read it under three hours), a great change from the rather intense novels I have been reading lately and I highly recommend it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This Girl is Nuts, November 17, 2009

By 

SuzieQ - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beautiful Disaster (Privilege) (Paperback)

After reading the first book in this series, I was eager to get started on this book. Arianna is nuts. She really thinks that she is going to just live someone else's life and no one will ever find out. She is trying to start over from two years ago in her life. So why not go back a little further. She's 20 or 21, pretending to be a sixteen year old. Brianna's grandmother really isn't going to notice that her grades went from failing to straight A's? And now she suddenly wants to go to Princeton? She gets herself out of every sticky situation she comes across. She still thinks that it's OK to kill if she has to, or if someone pushes her to do it. Rather than lay low she is desperate to "live it up" no matter what she is "driven" to. Again, it's everyone else's fault. The ending was a little predictible, but at the same time left you wondering what is going to happen in the next book. Kate Brian does a really good job at keeping you at the edge of your seat.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wicked thy name...., August 31, 2009

By 

Odessa - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beautiful Disaster (Privilege) (Paperback)

This second privilege book (beautiful disaster), is so wicked to read of; with Arianna ditched out of jail and going off to boarding school just outside of D.C. for another chance of life of the wealth with somebody else name---who's now dead; she make new friends and chatting along with the hottest guy on campus, everything gone right for her, not quite yet when things turns around when her ex-cellmate came by and hunt her and wants money from it and her ex-lover came by along as well to wanted her back.

This book is to die for and can wait for the third book in october.