In 1928, Emily Locke’s final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls is derailed when Violet, the school’s brightest star (and a cunning beauty for whom Emily would do anything), falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: Violet’s death was no accident. There’s an obvious culprit, the French schoolmistress with whom Violet was getting a little too close – they just need to prove it.

Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet’s spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun.

Something deadly is infecting Briarley. It starts with rotten food and curdled milk, but quickly grows more threatening. As the body count rises and students race to save themselves, Emily must confront the fatal forces poisoning the school. Emily’s fight for survival forces her to reevaluate everything she knows: about Violet, Evelyn, Briarley, and, ultimately, herself.

Avery Curran channels the indelible ambience and intrigue of the classic boarding school novel while turning the beloved genre on its head in this visceral, exuberant debut.

I love a good dark academia, and this one was a lot of fun. It hits the markers of the genre and then layers on a few things I wasn’t expecting, and the combination worked really well for me.

In this book, we’re at Briarley, an isolated girls’ boarding school in 1928. Emily is in her final year and she has a bit of a crush on Briarly’s star pupil, Violet. She’s the kind of person Emily would do basically anything for. Violet is beautiful, smart, and a little dangerous in the way only an eighteen-year-old semi-mean girl who knows exactly how much power she has can be. But then, on Violet’s eighteenth birthday, she falls to her death. Everyone calls it an accident, but Emily is certain she knows better. So does her uptight academic rival, Evelyn, which is awkward, because the two of them don’t agree on much of anything. They both suspect the French schoolmistress Violet was getting a little too cozy with. They just have to prove it.

Desperate for answers, Emily and the other students visit a medium and then decide to do their own séance and the mystery deepens when Violet actually shows up. To make matters more frustrating (for Emily at least) Violet chooses Evelyn as her channel. And Violet has a warning. The danger at Briarley has only begun. It starts small. Spoiled food. Curdled milk. Things that taste off. And then it gets a lot worse, and the body count starts to climb.

The writing in this one is strong, and the atmosphere is off the charts. The 1928 setting feels real and there were times when I felt like I was actually at Briarley. The school feels claustrophobic and the unease builds slowly which is really effective.

Another thing I appreciated was that each character feels distinct, which is harder to pull off in a book full of boarding school girls than it sounds. Emily is the lead, and her grief and obsession over Violet shape everything. She’s not exactly likeable, but I still rooted for her. Evelyn is the rival you slowly come to understand, and her arc was one of my favorite parts of the book. Watching her go from a closed-off, religiously devout student to the unlikely mouthpiece for a very chaotic dead girl is great. The supporting cast also has real texture. Nobody felt like a placeholder.

The sapphic romance layer is woven through everything, and it’s done well. There’s the longing, the secret looks, the things Emily would never say out loud, the way teenage desire and teenage jealousy bend everything around them that is further complicated by the beliefs in 1928. The pettiness and the swooning sit right next to the supernatural stuff in a way that feels true to that age and that environment.

The paranormal elements worked for me too. I won’t say much about what’s actually happening at Briarley, because half the pleasure is figuring it out alongside Emily and her friends, but the explanation lands. The book earns its weirdness. It builds the rules of what’s going on slowly enough that the reveals feel like discoveries rather than dumps.

If you love dark academia with amazing atmosphere, 1920s mean girls, sapphic longing, and a supernatural undercurrent, this is one to pick up. It’s more than a standard entry in the genre. I had fun with it.

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