The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant
Book One of the V Trilogy
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- £3.49
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- £3.49
Publisher Description
So many secrets for such a small island. From the moment Anne Merchant arrives at Cania Christy, a boarding school for the world's wealthiest teens, the hushed truths of this strange, unfamiliar land begin calling to her—sometimes as lulling drumbeats in the night, sometimes as piercing shrieks.
One by one, unanswered questions rise. No one will tell her why a line is painted across the island or why she is forbidden to cross it. Her every move—even her performance at the school dance—is graded as part of a competition to become valedictorian, a title that brings rewards no one will talk about. And Anne discovers that the parents of her peers surrender million-dollar possessions to enroll their kids in Cania Christy, leaving her to wonder what her lowly funeral director father could have paid to get her in… and why.
As a beautiful senior struggles to help Anne make sense of this cloak-and-dagger world without breaking the rules that bind him, she must summon the courage to face the impossible truth—and change it—before she and everyone she loves is destroyed by it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two years after her mother's suicide, Anne Merchant is sent to boarding school. Anne is used to being an outcast her mother was mentally ill, and her father is a mortician and she hopes things will change at Cania Christy, an exclusive institution on an island off the Maine coast; they certainly do. While Anne has long dreamed of becoming valedictorian of her class, she isn't prepared for how the process works at Cania. She's assigned a Guardian she describes as "the ugliest son of a bitch alive" to guide her and evaluate her progress 24/7. He advises her to cultivate her talent for "seduction," making the most of her "hyper-sexualized state." She rejects the advice, but can't stop thinking about it at least until she witnesses the locals' is-it-real-or-isn't-it baby-burning ritual. Wiebe's first novel uses the oft-seen boarding school setting to saturate this coming-of-age story in eroticized, derivative horror. The book opens a paranormal trilogy, but while major revelations turn Anne's world on its head, it's not a world that invites lingering. Ages 12 up.
