My Rating: ★★★★★
We are back at Tiffin, darlings! My Nantucket summer reading tradition may have ended in August, but Elin Hilderbrand has returned on my bookshelf with a perfect gift: a crisp New England autumn, a senior class with everything to lose, and all the rich-people-behaving-badly magic I adore, just a few hundred miles inland.
One note: The Thoroughbreds can technically stand alone, but you'll get much more out of it having read The Academy first, since so many threads from the first book get resolved here.
Reader beware — spoilers are ahead!
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The Book
It’s senior year — “sixth form,” in Tiffin-speak — which means college applications, valedictorian math, and last hurrahs. Charley Hicks is no longer the wide-eyed new girl; she’s running the school paper, half of Tiffin’s most-watched couple, and locked in a razor-thin race for the top of the class. But she and East can’t seem to agree on anything lately. Dub and Hakeem, the football-field best friends, are suddenly on the outs, and no one will say why. There’s a new girl, Pippa Sacks, stirring the pot. With Honey Vandermeid gone, a new college counselor steps in. And, of course, there’s the question we’ve all been waiting on since the last page of The Academy: what was in Cinnamon Peters’s final email?
Book Club Discussions
Chef Haz’s themed dinner nights: which one would you show up for first!? For me, it was the Corner Store inspired menu, without question, given how buzzy the NYC eatery is with celebrities like Taylor Swift! Honestly, Chef Haz’s dinners were the coziest thread in the whole book — I’d enroll at Tiffin for the dining hall alone.
Head of School Audre Robinson survives her financial scandal relatively unscathed — did she get off too easily, or did she earn her redemption?
The attorney in me wants to say she got off far too easy — this was gross financial negligence by a fiduciary! But the reader in me was rooting for her the whole time. I think she earned it, but I wish the fall out had been more complex and less the feeling of a tied-up-in-a-bow afterthought.
Was Mav a dedicated counselor, or did he cross a line (namely with Charley)?
Both, and that’s what makes him so interesting. His heart was in the right place — he clearly wanted these kids to win — but there’s a reason boundaries exist, especially between adults and students. I read him as a good counselor who got too close, and that’s a line that matters even when the intentions are pure.
Do you think Charley and East actually make it, or are they more “great while it lasted? Great while it lasted, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Some loves are meant to carry you through a season of your life, not the whole thing. They’ll always be each other’s senior-year story, but I don’t see East succeeding at the collegiate level if he is really just going through the motions for anyone other than fully himself.
If Hilderbrand and Cunningham wrote a spinoff following just one character, whose story do you want to read next — and why? Chef Haz!!! Give me a behind-the-scenes look at the kitchen, the menus, the faculty gossip overheard over the pass. It would be part food memoir, part boarding-school exposé, and I would preorder it immediately.
Were you satisfied with how Cinnamon’s final email played out, or did it leave you wanting more closure (or more chaos)? Satisfied — but I’m greedy, so I wanted more chaos! After a whole book of anticipation, I was hoping for a bigger explosion.
Want to participate in the book club discussion? It’s never too late! Keep the conversation going in the comments!
If You Liked The Thoroughbreds, May I Recommend:
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
If you finished The Thoroughbreds and aren’t ready to leave the quad, this is your next stop. Truly Devious is set at Ellingham Academy, a remote and wildly eccentric Vermont boarding school where, back in 1936, the founder’s wife and daughter were kidnapped in one of the most infamous unsolved crimes of the century. Enter a true-crime-obsessed new student who arrives determined to crack the case — until history starts repeating itself. Think of it as The Thoroughbreds’ darker, moodier cousin — and the perfect pivot into spooky season. Bonus: it’s a series, so you can binge.
October Book Club: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 1–8 by Beth Brower
For October, we're doing something a little different and reading an entire series! Picture Bridget Jones meets Jane Austen: it's 1883, and the witty, headstrong Emma M. Lion has returned to her London neighborhood of St. Crispian's, only to have her plans for a charmed, studious life derailed by a meddling cousin, a formidable aunt, and a cast of delightfully odd neighbors — all recorded in her decidedly unfiltered journals.
Don't let the size of the series fool you — these journals span 100–250 pages each on average. You will fly.
P.S. I promise to always keep The Lauren Letter free as my little exercise of trying to make the world a bit more beautiful. If, in return, you could considering giving this post a “like” or share with a friend, it would just mean the world to me.
Are you in my Amazon search right now, because I was literally picking another book for my next read and this email pops up... 👀👯♀️
I loved this book as well!! I agree with a lot of your thoughts. I thought Cinnamon’s email (video) was sweet, but I left wanting more after so much build up! I also thought Audre totally got off the hook with that financial mess. I was rooting for her, but gosh that did feel a bit too unbelievable/“tied up in a bow” at the end. I would love a spin off book on Charley!