KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE

Betrayed by her best friend, a young woman at a prestigious British boarding school finds herself at the center of a murder mystery.

As they enter their final year at Morton Academy, an elite secondary school founded to provide economically disadvantaged students with a path into the most rarefied circles of higher education, Chloe Roberts is stunned when her friend Nikhita Patel sabotages her bid to become Head Girl. Nikhita also steals Chloe’s boyfriend, Theo, and though Chloe, who’s Deputy Head Girl, is still a member of the secret Jewel and Bone Society, she finds herself adrift. Readers will easily feel sympathy for her plight. Chloe’s new roommates for the 1999-2000 school year, Amari Haddad and Claire Walker, take her under their wings, introducing her to a decadeslong school tradition, The Book of Crime and Punishment: Students write down the name of someone they feel has wronged them, the person’s transgression, and an imagined punishment. Chloe adds Nikhita to the ledger. But when bad things begin happening to people at Morton, Chloe fears there may be more to the book—and possibly to Nikhita—than she at first imagined. Leaning heavily into boarding school mystery tropes, this whodunit will keep readers guessing, though experienced genre readers may find the ultimate reveal not altogether unexpected. Chloe and Claire are white, Nikhita’s name cues Indian heritage, and Amari has Algerian ancestry.

Friend drama expands into something more sinister in this engaging, if somewhat formulaic, thriller.