THE ST. AMBROSE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

A teenager at a boarding school grapples with social hierarchies, bullying, and murder.

It’s Sarah Taylor’s first day at the St. Ambrose School for Girls, and she’s hoping for a fresh start. She’d like to ditch her mother's nickname for her, Sally, and reintroduce herself as Bo. But her dreams of a new beginning are dashed when her social-climbing mother, Tera, introduces herself to a family dropping off daughter Greta Stanhope. Tera declares that Greta and Sarah will become the best of friends. Sarah immediately knows the truth: “My mother is wrong. Greta and I will never be friends.” And she knows something else, too: “And one of us is going to be dead by the end of the semester.” Sarah is not wealthy like her new classmates, dresses only in black, and has bipolar disorder: a trifecta of differences that will immediately cast her to the bottom of the social ladder. But instead of simply being ignored, Sarah becomes Greta’s object of social torture. Sarah has no friends, and while she would love to be friends with her roommate, Ellen Strotsberry, Strots offers strong loyalty but little companionship. As Sarah begins to uncover the secrets filling her dorm, her drama with Greta reaches a fever pitch, and so too do the intense hallucinations brought on by her bipolar disorder. Sarah is an unreliable narrator, and the reader will be deeply swept up in the task of figuring out what, and whom, to trust. While it is evident that Ward has attempted to treat her protagonist’s bipolar disorder with sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and at times a poignant humor, her portrayal of Sarah does dip dangerously into the stereotype that people with mental illnesses are inherently violent.

A complex and gripping, if flawed, unraveling of the secrets and lies of teenage girls.