THE CURSE OF HEARTWOOD ACADEMY

A hazing ritual at a haunted boarding school goes horribly awry.

Allie Lau, who’s of Chinese descent, is the youngest of four siblings. She’s starting her freshman year at the boarding school Heartwood Academy. Her tour guide, Pru Cotton, is a domineering blond senior whose influential family, wealthy school benefactors, makes her nearly untouchable. Allie and her roommate, Ricki Mendez, learn from Pru that as “freshies,” they’ll have to pass “the test.” It involves spending a night in the woods adjacent to the campus, where the older students devise nightmarish pranks. Heartwood Academy has its own storied past with a gothic slant: The school’s founding family has a tortured backstory replete with spirits, self-harm, and unfinished business. Before long, the night of the test devolves into terrors none of the students—either the experienced ones or the new arrivals—could possibly have imagined. Chan’s paranormal mystery, which is designed to be accessible to dyslexic and striving readers, is compulsively readable, begging to be finished in a single sitting, with its breakneck pacing ratcheted by the escalating tension and a healthy dose of red herrings. Although the characterizations feel a bit inchoate, the plot-driven narrative suffers little for it. Fans of dark academia may think they have the ending figured out, but it should sufficiently shock even the most seasoned veteran of the genre—along with the healthy splashes of gore.

Fresh, pulse-pounding, and page-turning.