Boarding School Books: Are they accurate?

I recently started reading C.J. Daugherty's 'Night School' books from the recommendation of a friend, and I have to say I'm enjoying them immensely - I had a stack of books set for reading and instead rushed out to purchase the entirety of Daugherty's series so that I could read them first!

If you haven't read these, firstly where have you been living?! and secondly, get started now, you definitely won't regret it. I've been practically flipping through these, and I think I find them particularly interesting as a result of their setting - Cimmeria Academy, the boarding school with all its mystery, intrigue, and sprawling gothic grounds.

Romantic as these, as well as other boarding school novels are, how accurate are they, really? As somebody who attended boarding schools for a large portion of my education, I can answer this pretty confidently.

Unlike a lot of boarding school books, where the author has run away with an old-fashioned idea of hell in acres of parkland, Daugherty has achieved a pretty good picture of life inside one of these schools. Her protagonist, Allie, initially has a lot of questions and confusions (one being the definition of prep, which I clearly remember asking about myself as a child!) which are legitimate and sound, and when she takes Cimmeria into her stride, she begins to find a special bond is formed between her and her peers, which is something I relate to strongly. When you spend as much time as that with your best friends (and, in fact, some people you truly can't stand), eating with them, spending your down time in the evenings in their company, you become more like siblings than schoolmates, and that includes the regular squabbles faced when you stay in such close proximity!

I think Daugherty has achieved something many haven't, and I really enjoy reading a series where I'm not constantly tearing my hair out at the stereotypical Brontë-style cold porridge breakfast and bare rooms with paper thin mattresses. If you want a true insight to boarding school life, these are pretty spot on (Except for the whole Night School thing, of course).