Starred review from June 7, 2021
In Lee’s (the Feverwake series) deliciously unsettling standalone thriller, 18-year-old Felicity Morrow, who is white, is reattempting her senior year at Dalloway, a small prep school in the Catskills. The year before, her obsession with the Dalloway Five—purported witches who were brutally murdered in and around Felicity’s residence hall 300 years ago—led, she suspects, to the mysterious death of her girlfriend Alex. Though she’s determined to abandon magic following the previous year’s events, she’s soon drawn into the orbit of eccentric white, gray-eyed novelist Ellis Haley, 17, a fellow Godwin House denizen who persuades Felicity to help her research the murders for Ellis’s next book. As the girls grow closer, forming a coven with their housemates, Felicity, haunted perhaps literally by both Alex and the Five’s leader, begins to realize that everything is not as it seems—not within her own mind, and not within Godwin House. Lee touches on abusive familial and romantic relationships, classism, mental health stigma, racism, and sexism while providing clever commentary on—and near-constant references to—women in the genre of horror. With queer primary characters, an irresistible gothic atmosphere, and unrelenting creeping dread, this propulsive work of dark academia is both thrilling and thought-provoking. Ages 14–up. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary.
June 15, 2021
A young woman's return to her monied boarding school is haunted by the trauma of her girlfriend's recent death and the school's rumored history involving witchcraft in this contemporary thriller. Felicity Morrow's senior year was cut short after her girlfriend Alex died, and her decision to return to the Dalloway School because "being friendless at Dalloway was better than being friendless anywhere else" makes clear her feelings of isolation. It's seemingly inevitable that she'll be drawn into the orbit of infamous new student Ellis Haley, who, despite her young age, has already written a Pulitzer-winning novel. Amid a fantastical, darkly atmospheric haze of cigarette smoke and hard alcohol, Felicity agrees to assist Ellis in her research about the Dalloway Five, girls whose gruesome deaths centuries earlier at the school are shrouded in mystery and who were the subject of her own abandoned senior thesis. Richly imagined queer characters, including Ellis' older nonbinary sibling, Quinn, are the stars of this story, which incrementally reveals truths about Alex's death as it winds the bond between Felicity and Ellis ever tighter, spinning a tale rife with literary references, magnetic romance, and occasionally melodramatic but menacing gothic tropes out to its end. The protagonists are cued White; there is ethnic diversity in secondary and background characters. A layered, stylized, brooding mystery that will draw readers in. (Thriller. 14-18)
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Starred review from August 1, 2021
Gr 9 Up-Eighteen-year-old Felicity Morrow has returned to Dalloway School after time away recovering from the trauma of her exgirlfriend's death. The blonde teen is determined to finish her thesis and break her obsession with the witchcraft rooted deep in the school's history. But Dalloway's occult past is everywhere, and Felicity's first obstacle appears in the form of 17-year-old writing prodigy Ellis; Felicity's other new housemates-Kajal, Clara, and Leonie- fall under Ellis's spell as quickly as Felicity. Felicity is certain she's being haunted. Is it the ghost of her ex-girlfriend back for revenge? The spirit they let loose last term? Or is it the contradictory Ellis, who ensures magic and witchcraft are never far from Felicity's mind? Through a multilayered plot described in devastatingly poetic prose, Lee crafts a dark academic environment of secrets and shadows. As Felicity unravels, she instinctively turns to tarot, candles, and herbs, and Ellis encourages and discourages Felicity in turn. Felicity's trauma and mental illness and Ellis's manipulation are intensified by substance abuse, violence, and death. Social issues such as class privilege, sexuality, and racism are also touched upon. With two unreliable main characters in a story rich in uncertainty and suspense, readers will rush along the work's twisty path to a very satisfying ending. Kajal has brown skin; Leonie is Black. Everyone else is presumed white. VERDICT Teens will be as haunted by this narrative as the characters within its pages.-Maggie Mason Smith, Clemson Univ., SC
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Starred review from June 1, 2021
Grades 10-12 *Starred Review* Felicity is haunted by the ghost of her dead girlfriend, Alex. She's equally haunted by her research on the Dalloway Five, students of Dalloway School who mysteriously died in impossible circumstances on the grounds of Godwin House, where Felicity has returned to finish senior year--amid rumors that she murdered Alex. Felicity captures the attention of writing prodigy Ellis Haley, who is working on a novel inspired by the Five. Ellis wants Felicity's help; she's a strict method writer interested in proving to Felicity that murder is the work of a psychopath, not the dark magic Felicity believes is woven into the fabric of Dalloway. This novel explores how we are defined by the choices we make, even unintentionally or in harrowing situations. With a cast of morally ambiguous characters, it makes the reader want to look away from the truth, as Felicity often does, but cuts to the bone in such a way that the pages keep turning. Lee paints a sharp picture of what happens when intelligent women are painted as witches and when women's anger is viewed as hysteria and psychopathy. Felicity is an unreliable narrator who compels readers to empathize as she grieves Alex and tries to find her way back to herself. This twisty, immersive thriller is about the fine line between passion and drowning in the darkness of obsession.
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