The elevator pitch: 

A #Me Too version of Prep

Read/Skip:

Read!
Give me a novel set in a preppy, isolated, wood-paneled, offbeat school, and I'm game. The Swallows fits in in the long tradition of quirky, preppy voices in American storytelling, from Salinger to Sittenfeld to Riverdale to Vampire Weekend songs. Most of them use the setting to encapsulate stories that can be cynical and ironic. The Swallows goes one step further, hiding the crude within the quirky.
Blending the two elements is a tightrope act in which the Swallows mostly succeed.
The setting in the Swallow is undoubtedly charming. A typical New England prep school. The jolt of the transition from the Keats Hall to entitled boys who score blowjobs in a secret chatroom called the Darkroom is a considerable speedbump. But the environment serves its purpose; it's the sugarcoating that lets the bitter pill go down smoother.
The only gripe I have that there was no sex-positive message; it was quite puritan in focusing on the one-sided aspect of blowjobs. I found it disappointing that the girls in this story weren't able to ask for what they wanted sexually. I wished to see a girl exploring her sexuality in this context. The girls at Stonebridge don't seem to have their desires.
I loved most of the characters, even if some of the teachers seemed redundant, apart from our sympathetic protagonist Ms. Witt. I had some difficulty distinguishing between some of the male ones. The students were engaging, better drawn.
The Swallows is black and white, and the ending can leave you with a bitter taste. But it is also very distinctive, immediately iconic, and reads like a dream.

The Gist: 

After some troubles at her old school, Alex Witt starts teaching at Stonebridge Academy, hoping things will be better here. But as soon as she reads the first essays of her students, Ms. Witt realizes there is trouble brewing at Stonebridge. Soon, she learns from Gemma Russo, a kickass loner pretending to be an insider, that the boys at the school have an internet site called the Darkroom, where they discuss the girls they have sex in every sketchy detail.
Gemma is on the warpath; nothing can deter her; something drastic must be done about it.