A HOUSE OF VIPERS

At an elite boarding school, a group of teens find themselves in the midst of a decades-old mystery.

Nestled in the mountains of Colorado lies the prestigious Meddlehart Academy, a prep school with a storied past. Sutter Heyward is returning for his junior year, but this time things are different: His beloved older brother, Lawson, a fellow Meddlehart student, went missing the previous year. Sutter and his friends—Margot, Carter, Fallon, and Grayson—learn about a secret society, the Order of the Vipers, that’s seeking a rumored treasure buried somewhere on campus. The teens are recruited, and they hope that joining the order will help them learn the truth about what happened to Lawson. But before long, they discover that the school’s secrets are more sinister than they ever could have imagined. Jackson’s debut is ambitious in scope but falters under the weight of a bloated narrative that mixes a secret society, treasure hunting, a romance, and a missing-persons case without fully integrating the strands into a coherent whole. A central love triangle feels overly melodramatic and stiff, often eclipsing the thriller aspects. The chapters rotate among Sutter’s, Fallon’s, and Grayson’s third-person perspectives, but their voices sound irritatingly similar. The teens encounter few red herrings and decipher clues with breezy ease, lessening the suspense. As the case concludes, there’s a hint of more adventures to come. Carter has dark brown skin, and other main characters are cued white.

Dark academia rendered toothless.