The St. Ambrose School for Girls
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jul 11, 2023
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Book of the Summer
Heathers meets The Secret History in this thrilling coming-of-age novel set in a boarding school where the secrets are devastating—and deadly.
When Sarah Taylor arrives at the exclusive St. Ambrose School, she’s carrying more baggage than just what fits in her suitcase. She knows she’s not like the other girls—if the shabby, all-black, non-designer clothes don’t give that away, the bottle of lithium hidden in her desk drawer sure does.
St. Ambrose’s queen bee, Greta Stanhope, picks Sarah as a target from day one and the most popular, powerful, horrible girl at school is relentless in making sure Sarah knows what the pecking order is. Thankfully, Sarah makes an ally out of her roommate Ellen “Strots” Strotsberry, a cigarette-huffing, devil-may-care athlete who takes no bullshit. Also down the hall is Nick Hollis, the devastatingly handsome RA, and the object of more than one St. Ambrose student’s fantasies. Between Strots and Nick, Sarah hopes she can make it through the semester, dealing with not only her schoolwork and a recent bipolar diagnosis, but Greta’s increasingly malicious pranks.
Sarah is determined not to give Greta the satisfaction of breaking her. But when scandal unfolds, and someone ends up dead, her world threatens to unravel in ways she could never have imagined. The St. Ambrose School for Girls is a dangerous, delicious, twisty coming-of-age tale that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
