Jessica Ward’s undoubtedly a more than capable writer but I found myself unable to fully connect with her variation on the “mean girls” school story. Set in the early 1990s, the novel’s narrated by Sarah Taylor. Sarah’s a scholarship girl who’s reluctantly enrolled at an exclusive, New England boarding school. The school community is dominated by predatory, wealthy Greta and her loyal entourage, and it’s not long before Sarah is singled out as one of their prey. Sarah is a potentially interesting character but I found the portrayal of her experiences with a form of bipolar disorder a little heavy-handed and many of the supporting characters tipped towards stereotypical – a prime example was the misunderstood, sporty, closeted lesbian. Overall, it wasn’t clear to me what kind of novel this was actually intended to be, it started out as an apparent attempt to overcome the conventions of the subgenre - introspective, punctuated by detailed literary references and wry observations - but then morphed into a rather melodramatic crime story that I found less than convincing. Another major stumbling block for me was the incredibly slow pace, I felt there was far too much padding in the earlier sections –repeated information about Sarah and her fragile, mental state - while the villainous Greta was too thinly drawn – and the contrast between Greta’s role as exploiter and her exploitation by a male staff member was awkwardly framed. It’s an interesting piece and I appreciated its ambitions but ultimately just not the right fit for me.

The St Ambrose School for Girls is a standalone psychological thriller by author, Jessica Ward. It was my first read by this author. I picked it up based on the premise being a huge fan of academic thrillers and teenage drama. The book focuses heavily on a young woman’s experience of mental health and is a bit of a slow burn. I found that some parts were overly convoluted, detailed and didn’t really drive the plot forward. I enjoyed the examination of teenage girls and friendships and the characters mental health struggles. I’ll keep an eye out for other books by this author.

felt truly so disappointed by this! secret history meets heathers? YES. but it lacked any of the atmosphere, tonal elegance, and propulsion of those stories. there's probably a good book underneath this, but it needs a good chop and tighten.

This probably drew me in because I was of a similar age to the characters in the all girls’ school. If you’re a Mean Girls fan, you’re probably going to love this – sharp, acid tongued teenagers whose privilege drips from their glossy hair and perfect lives, coupled with the new girl who feels like she’ll never fit in. When a character ends up dead, well, that’s when the tension amps up.

The St Ambrose School for Girls is a novel about the new girl at a prestigious school who finds herself the target of pranks and caught up a web of secrets. In 1991, Sarah Taylor, a fifteen year old with bipolar, starts at St Ambrose School For Girls after her mother applies for a place for her. Mean girl Greta is queen of St Ambrose, but she has a tendency to prank other students, and Sarah has enough to deal with adjusting to the school without Greta's attention, and things only start getting darker.

This book was compared to so many other works in the blurb—The Secret History, Heathers, Mean Girls, My Dark Vanessa—but really what that means is that there's a plot element or setting similar to them, as the book itself isn't really like them. It is written from the point of view of Sarah and that should be an opportunity to explore what it is like to live with bipolar. As I don't have bipolar, I cannot comment on the depiction, but I think the author's note claim that bipolar isn't a plot device is definitely untrue, seeing as both the entire way the narrative is told and the reveals at the end rely on her having bipolar. Sarah also has OCD, which she mentions once or twice, but it takes a very long time for this to be mentioned by name even though she displays symptoms of it from early in the book, and I expected a book so focused on mental health to address it more explicitly.

The writing means that the book is overly filled with description and very slow, meaning you almost have to skip paragraphs of pointless description to get anywhere, and the style of dialogue is very minimal, but with description in between which often made me unsure if the character had actually replied or not. The story is fairly gripping, but takes a long time for anything to actually happen, and once it does, you never really know what actually happens, because Sarah is an unreliable narrator. That can be a great plot device, but in this case, I didn't even feel like there were many clues to suggest what was actually the case or not, so it was maybe less effective than it could've been. Also, the actual twists in the end aren't very exciting and don't make the book memorable.

In terms of the content, the characters are broadly stereotypes: there's a mean girl whose family are losing their money, a sporty rich girl with a secret, a single Black girl who is on a scholarship, a sad female RA who has a sad crush on the male RA, etc. Sarah observes that everyone is either pretty and popular, or sporty, and that may just be how she's viewing the school, but it is interesting that it is presented this way, when surely there were a few more cliques or outsiders that just her (there's nothing in the text to suggest she's wrong, either). The narrative covers a range of topics that might feature at a school—mental health, homophobia, eating disorders, sexual assault, suicide—and doesn't shy away from darker stuff, though the depictions of suicide and suicidal thoughts definitely need a trigger warning at the start of the book as its pretty intense. There were some interesting parts though—for example, Sarah's realisation of her mother's own life and feeling closer to her—that had a complexity not found in other bits of the book.

There's a lot of stuff that could've been interesting in The St Ambrose School for Girls, if it was written better and the characters and content was handled in a more complex way. I found the book fairly easy to read and I wondered why it was going to go, but it turned out to be predictable and the ending all happened very fast given how slow the rest of it was. It will be disappointing for anyone looking for 'dark academia' from it, because there's basically no academia in it despite the school setting, and generally it blurs into any book set in an elite school in terms of what actually happens in it.

This novel started out pretty well. I was definitely hooked by the setting, not so much the character. I read over 100 pages and found that I wasn't enjoying the novel, it didn't seem to move along - the slowest of slow burns can be good, but the writing needs to be rich and this was not. I feel the novel could have been better had there been more twists - not just what the character *thinks* is happening, it got a little repetitive. I would have really liked more dialogue or interaction with other characters.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I've noticed a few reviews have the same thoughts as myself in that this unfortunately wasn't for me. I searched high and low for content warnings and came up short, I think it's essential to include these where possible and especially with this one.

I felt this has excellent potential for a thriller, but the descriptors were so long-winded and in my opinion, they could be cut. It's a slow-paced book for the majority which felt as though I was fighting to get to the end which sadly took away my enthusiasm to continue reading.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me. I felt that it was far too long winded and over descriptive which did nothing to keep me hooked. I was expecting a thriller, and it did have thriller elements, but there was almost no suspense at all. I was so bored by the time I had reached the half way point and had to slug through the rest of the book.

This book wasn’t for me, it has some elements of thriller/mystery but doesn’t maintain the feeling of suspense. Instead the book seems to drag on for long periods rather than having a specific purpose to the main plot. Sarah is a pretty generic main character too and doesn’t really have a uniqueness about her - it seems that the input of a mental illness was given to give the impression that Sarah was more impactful.

This is an interesting and somewhat disturbing story in the YA genre set in a private school in America.

Among the privileged students who look shiny on the surface many are troubled or even deeply disturbed. Struggling with bipolar singles a student out and while she tries to hide her diagnosis and history of mental health problems she is fighting to fit in.

Many issues are covered as well as the mental health angle, including bullying, teacher/student relationships, homosexuality, homophobia, suicidal thoughts and many more.

An interesting story and a good read, but there was not a real ring of truth behind it for me as I didn’t seem to engage with the characters as much as I would have liked.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

This is a great addition to the genre of dark academia. If you like the virgin suicides I think this would be a good read a like.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group for a digital ARC in exchange for a review.

This really didn't work for me. Far too much of the book was taken up by lengthy descriptions of things that didn't need to be lingered on, or hypothetical events imagined by the MC. Most of the book was set-up for the main event promised early on; this didn't happen until the 80% mark and ended up feeling very rushed. I get the impression the author was trying to build suspense, but there was so little actual evidence for the assumptions the MC was making that it just made me bored and frustrated.

The treatment of mental illness really didn't sit right with me, to the point where I found it borderline offensive and outright harmful at times. None of the characters felt well developed - Greta and 'Strots' in particular felt like complete stereotypes and I felt very little sympathy towards the MC. I ended up skimming through lots of the book without feeling like I was missing anything important.

This is quite a difficult book for me to review.

I was enticed to read this because of the Mean Girls comparison, but actually that didn't really come through for me.

Sarah is a loner with bipolar and doesn't feel she fits in anywhere in the world. Greta is a typical school bully, but actually the things she does are quite juvenile and low level.

The majority of the book has a painfully slow pace with far too many unnecessary descriptions and metaphors, while nothing much was happening.

The actual murder doesn't happen until about 70% of the way in, and after that the pace does pick up and the story is much better, although the mystery is quite short lived.
I would have enjoyed this much more if all of the book followed this same pace, and honestly about a third of this book didn't need to be there.

Lots of trigger warnings in this book:
Suicide description, sexual relationship with a minor, murder, bullying, mental health, homophones.

In what way(s) does Sarah aka Sally Taylor not fit in at her new, elite boarding school, Saint Ambrose? Let me count the ways!

Unlike most of the other girls, Sarah's background is far from privileged, and she is covering up not just the emotional scars of being raised by a narcissistic mother and an absent father, but a far more problematic secret that she will go to great lengths to protect.

The novel gets off to a decidedly slow start, and we accompany Sarah through a long period when she agonizes about the fact that she has no friends. The situation is made much worse by the low-grade bullying she is subjected to by the golden girl of the school, Margaret "Greta" Stanhope, and you sense that this situation is unlikely to end well.

In the meantime, Sarah gathers what comfort she can from the relative kindness of her roommate Ellen Strotsberry aka Strots, an athlete, and from her crush on the good-looking (married) RA, Nick.

This book contains a number of triggering topics including mental health issues, bipolar disease, loneliness, bullying, suicide etc. But for me, the biggest challenge was probably the slow pace of the storytelling.

Nevertheless, you do feel for Sara, even though she is not entirely reliable in terms of her perspective. And there are elements of originality in this narrative, so it could be a good fit for those who particularly enjoy dark academia novels.

In the mood for a good prep school ni do since Curtis Sittenfelds Prep. I’m hoping this should be the answer to that. I will be sure share my full review and thoughts soon, but I am very much looking forward to acquiring this and sharing it with our readers, I also think this will make a delish book club pick as well. Perfect to add to your summer beach bag