Title: The St. Ambrose School for Girls
Author: Jessica Ward
Publication: July 11, 2023
Publisher: Gallery Books
Genre: Thrillers, Psychological Thriller
Pages: 367
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SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
When Sarah Taylor arrives at the exclusive St. Ambrose School, she’s carrying more baggage than just what fits in her suitcase. She knows she’s not like the other girls—if the shabby, all-black, non-designer clothes don’t give that away, the bottle of lithium hidden in her desk drawer sure does.
St. Ambrose’s queen bee, Greta Stanhope, picks Sarah as a target from day one and the most popular, powerful, horrible girl at school is relentless in making sure Sarah knows what the pecking order is. Thankfully, Sarah makes an ally out of her roommate Ellen “Strots” Strotsberry, a cigarette-huffing, devil-may-care athlete who takes no bullshit. Also down the hall is Nick Hollis, the devastatingly handsome RA, and the object of more than one St. Ambrose student’s fantasies. Between Strots and Nick, Sarah hopes she can make it through the semester, dealing with not only her schoolwork and a recent bipolar diagnosis, but Greta’s increasingly malicious pranks.
Sarah is determined not to give Greta the satisfaction of breaking her. But when scandal unfolds, and someone ends up dead, her world threatens to unravel in ways she could never have imagined.
REVIEW:
**A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
Boarding school books are my jam and Jessica Ward brought it with The St. Ambrose School for Girls. The story follows Sarah as she attends this new school with a whole lot of backstory that she would rather the girls not know and a popular mean girl takes notice right away.
There are a lot of characters in this book because you have all the adults that are in charge of the kids and all the girls who are important to the story. Sometimes I find this hard to follow but Ward did a great job of making each character unique to the point it was easy to keep track. There was also a lot of drama right off between Sarah and Greta as well as other girls. While I am not a teenager, so relating to these girls was hard for me, I really enjoyed the different personalities and how they were built up throughout.
I had a few reasons for not loving this book. Don’t get me wrong, the book was good and I enjoyed it, but it was a slow build. I was expecting the death to happen far earlier in the book than it did and be a larger focus of the story. I was a little disappointed in the length of time it took to get there. I also feel like a lot of this book took place inside Sarah’s head as she spiraled in one situation or another, and maybe that was the point, but at times it seemed too much. I wanted more story and less of her ininer monologue.
Even with these issues bothering me, I liked the story and as the dead student finally emerged, I needed to know who was responsible. Ward had me guessing until the big reveal and even then I was itching to know how it was all going to turn up. While I don’t think the story is believable in real life, that didn’t affect my rating. I will check out another Ward book in the future.
