MADAME ELDRIDGE'S WAYWARD HOME FOR UNRULY BOYS

A rehab program takes sinister twists for 10 temporary residents with supposed behavioral problems.

Consigned to the titular Victorian-style mansion (which is “wayward” in no known sense of the term) by his parents for falsely accusing them of being abusive, Elliot is immediately redubbed “Fibbsy” by its enigmatic, extravagantly costumed headmistress, Fighteria Eldridge, who, confusingly, “gave the impression she always knew more than one ever assumed she did.” White-presenting Fibbsy is surrounded by a racially diverse group of fellow renamed miscreants, like Slob, who’s repeatedly described as “chubby,” and Cheater, who has dyslexia (“The stereotype of Asians being book-smart was prevalent, but Cheater always dismantled that typecast”). The boys soon uncover numerous dark secrets about both the house and its owner while undertaking a regimen of quirky team-building exercises and being attacked by a violent apparition capable of “draining the very essence from their bones.” Most of the mysteries are left unsolved, and though the teens do bond at last, contradictory evidence at different points confusingly suggests that the exercises are designed to control, totally suppress, or conversely enhance their antisocial tendencies. Mystified readers will be left wondering what they missed in this wandering plotline that’s replete with absurd, illogical turns and maladroit prose (“His heavy Brooklyn accent reiterated he was tough”).

A bewildering, half-baked, thoroughly insensitive mess.