Review by Booklist Review
After a stay in a mental institution, 15-year-old Sarah Taylor is starting over at the St. Ambrose School for Girls in small-town Massachusetts. She wears all black, which puts her at odds with preppy mean girl Greta Stanhope, who begins to terrorize Sarah by watering down her shampoo and putting bleach in her laundry. Sarah has potential allies in her jock roommate, Ellen "Strots" Strotsberry, and resident advisor Nick "Hot RA" Hollis, but her mental illness makes it difficult to make connections. She's bipolar and prone to hallucinations and suicidal ideation, made even worse when she's not taking her lithium. Told from Sarah's first-person point of view, The St. Ambrose School for Girls is a twisty, claustrophobic thriller whose unreliable narrator complicates the relatively simple plot, misfit girl gets bullied, bully gets her comeuppance, but who did the come-upping? It can be difficult to decipher what's reality and what's just in Sarah's head, but Ward, who writes sexy vampire books as J. R. Ward (Lassiter, 2023), has written a thriller that readers who like a deep POV will enjoy.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ward (the Black Dagger Brotherhood series) delivers a diffuse slice of dark academia set in the rarefied halls of the titular school. The year is 1991, and 15-year-old narrator Sarah Taylor has been admitted to the prestigious Greensboro, Mass., institution on scholarship. On the first day of school, Sarah, in her black clothes and steel-toed boots, feels out of place among the other girls, "who look like they've stepped out of the rainbow page of a United Colors of Benetton ad." Her foreboding is justified: she's soon being bullied by a clique of mean girls captained by the slim, blonde Greta Stanhope. What's more, Sarah has recently been diagnosed as bipolar and is on daily doses of lithium to keep her tethered to reality; as a result, there's a smudgy line between real events and those she imagines. When someone turns up dead, that blurriness becomes a major problem for Sarah and everyone around her. The novel begins well, with strong characters and effectively blunt prose, but Ward takes so long to get to the meat of the action that it begins to feel indulgent. Before they reach the solid conclusion, many readers will have drifted away. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (July)Correction: An earlier version of this review misidentified the author.
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Review by Library Journal Review
Ward, who writes contemporary romance as Jessica Bird and paranormal romance as J.R. Ward, makes her latest a coming-of-age novel set in 1991--the era of Guns N' Roses, early Nirvana, and Sarah Taylor, who arrives at the St. Ambrose School for Girls. The author skillfully weaves the tale of Sarah, who recently received a bipolar diagnosis, as she navigates an elite boarding school. At St. Ambrose, she feels alone and friendless, but quickly finds that her roommate, Ellen "Strots" Strotsberry, has her back when she is targeted by Greta Stanhope, the dorm bully and their next-door neighbor. Although Sarah's experience is the focal point of the first half of the book, the second half is filled with twists as it turns a dangerous corner into a mystery involving sexual abuse by an adult resident-assistant, cover-ups of student violence, and even murder. Readers will learn, along with the protagonist, that people are much more than what they project on the surface. VERDICT Mental health, friendship, loyalty, jealousy, corruption, and love all have a place in this highly recommended novel that takes readers on a roller-coaster of events and emotions that the characters experience.--April Crowder
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A teenager at a boarding school grapples with social hierarchies, bullying, and murder. It's Sarah Taylor's first day at the St. Ambrose School for Girls, and she's hoping for a fresh start. She'd like to ditch her mother's nickname for her, Sally, and reintroduce herself as Bo. But her dreams of a new beginning are dashed when her social-climbing mother, Tera, introduces herself to a family dropping off daughter Greta Stanhope. Tera declares that Greta and Sarah will become the best of friends. Sarah immediately knows the truth: "My mother is wrong. Greta and I will never be friends." And she knows something else, too: "And one of us is going to be dead by the end of the semester." Sarah is not wealthy like her new classmates, dresses only in black, and has bipolar disorder: a trifecta of differences that will immediately cast her to the bottom of the social ladder. But instead of simply being ignored, Sarah becomes Greta's object of social torture. Sarah has no friends, and while she would love to be friends with her roommate, Ellen Strotsberry, Strots offers strong loyalty but little companionship. As Sarah begins to uncover the secrets filling her dorm, her drama with Greta reaches a fever pitch, and so too do the intense hallucinations brought on by her bipolar disorder. Sarah is an unreliable narrator, and the reader will be deeply swept up in the task of figuring out what, and whom, to trust. While it is evident that Ward has attempted to treat her protagonist's bipolar disorder with sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and at times a poignant humor, her portrayal of Sarah does dip dangerously into the stereotype that people with mental illnesses are inherently violent. A complex and gripping, if flawed, unraveling of the secrets and lies of teenage girls. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
