Insatiable
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Sep 22, 2026
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A chilling Gothic horror novel set at a coed boarding school in Scotland, where a teen girl must not only fight against her monstrous male classmates but the monster growing within her after being cursed.
Every wish granted comes with strings attached. That’s how Catriona Cameron ends up with a scholarship to Floodbane Academy—an elite boarding school on the Isle of Skye she never applied to—where she’ll be one of only six girls to enter the castle’s unwelcoming halls.
She’s not looking for trouble. But after a few male students violently attack and make cruel wishes about her, Catriona is cursed with devastatingly good looks, unpredictable new powers, and an insatiable hunger to devour anyone who preys upon women.
As the cravings mount, so does the carnage. With every new taste, Catriona faces the possibility that she is becoming as monstrous as those she hunts. Is slaying the wicked truly worth the loss of her humanity?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ridley (The Protégée) shifts into gothic territory with this folkloric horror novel set in 1885 Scotland, which blends boarding school intrigue and fairy mythology to probe questions of corrupt patriarchal power. Seventeen-year-old Catriona Cameron, described as having golden brown skin, longs to receive the same educational opportunities as her younger brother, Hamish. When a wish, granted by a fairy, garners her entry to Floodbane Academy—a prestigious boys' school that admits only a small number of girls—she seizes the chance, only to discover that Floodbane is plagued by a sinister aura. After enduring a violent attempted sexual assault in the nearby woods, and following inadvertent entanglements with fairies, Catriona is transformed into a baobhan sith, a creature compelled to prey upon men who harm women. As her supernatural urges intensify, Catriona struggles to reconcile the surge of energy with the gradual erosion of her sense of self. The institution's rigid hierarchies and the isolating expanse of its Highland setting establish an immediate, oppressive atmosphere. The protagonist's transformation is presented as both empowering and all-consuming, and her yearning for autonomy and vengeance are depicted as literalized forces with unavoidable consequences. A stark and immersive tale, the novel anchors its supernatural premise in the realities of gendered violence and the systems that sustain it. Ages 14–up.
