October 2013, MacMillan, 320 pages, Paperback, Review copy
Themes: boarding
school life, being an orphan, intelligence, horse mad friend, crazy friend, an
awful tragedy, mysteries, secrets, hatred, searching for the truth, being in
danger, grief, trying to remember things, never giving up,
Content: some teen
romance, lots of tension, occasional violence, a few laughs, a tissue is needed
Summary from Pan MacMillan
Don't go down to the woods today . . .
You can’t get into St Jude’s Academy
unless you’re gifted, talented and supremely rich. New girl Alyssa is on
a scholarship and feels like an outsider - she's not even that smart,
apart from her photographic memory (and that's cheating, right?). Then
one day her room-mate Lily is found floating face down in the lake. It
looks like suicide, but, torn apart with guilt and grief, Alyssa is
convinced that things aren't as they seem. Soon a jolted memory puts her
on the trail of a sinister secret that might hold the clues to Lily's
suspicious death. But Alyssa is in too deep, and she's being watched . .
.
Nayuleska's thoughts
I nearly
stopped reading 50 pages in as I wasn't entirely gripped by Alyssa's story -
it's probably more a case of me enjoying happier reads at the moment. However
I'm glad I carried on because the pace picked up and the increased danger to
Alyssa as she fought to find the truth about her friend's death gave me the
shivers. Anything could have happened at the end. One incident in particular
took me unawares and I was horrified by it. The full truth, when it gets
unravelled, is nice and twisted- all is never what it seems at St Jude's. I
liked Alyssa's aunt's attitude, I envied Alyssa her photographic memory,
althoguh there are some events she would rather forget. The romance side wasn't
too mushy or angst-ridden, and was definitely not the centre of the plot. All
in all a fun read if you can bear the slower paced beginning.
Suggested
read
Another
Young Adult boarding school read full of intrigue, deception and danger is Firespell by Chloe Neill (Young Adult, 10E/10E)
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