At an elite boarding school, Tiffin Academy, a brand new year is starting. Arriving is the school queen bee, Davi, an influencer from London, East, the son of the main school donor who does what he wants, and stranger Charley, who is not interested in fitting in and who is taking the place of a student who committed suicide the year before. There’s also Simone, the young new teacher who wants to get along with the students a little too well. When the head teacher finds out they jumped in the school rankings from top 50 to number 2, she wonders if will be the best year for the school yet… But the students have secrets, there’s plenty of drama brewing, and the anonymous gossip app ZipZap is about to hit the school.

Elin Hildebrand is of course the bestselling author of a series of books set in Nantucket. She recently ended that series in Swan Song, reviewed HERE. I’ve always enjoyed her books, they tend to have a cast of recurring characters and lots of intriguing dramatic situations which hook you in. They’re often set in beautiful or locations as well, often amongst the upwardly mobile, as they used to be called. This time, she’s writing with her daughter Shelby, who attended a school a lot like Tiffin, so she was able to offer inside information, so to speak, on the way of life and the kind of drama that might unfold there.

After the breezy, beachy island Nantucket setting, this feels a lot more Gilmore Girls meets Gossip Girl, with students and teachers problems at the forefront. It’s more tree-d pathways and dorm rooms, campus living and school traditions. I think it works as a setting, allowing for different plot threads to weave in and out of each other. There are quite a few characters here, and it’s more of an ensemble book than one with a definite main character. Like in her other books, there’s chapters of story, and then some chapters, in this case where the parents visit the school, that read like almost a Greek Chorus.

The book gets us into the world of the school immediately, with it’s ivy covered walls and it’s new chef, the faculty and the competition between schools for top ranking. I think that part feels very well realised and makes for a great setting for a book. I found the monied lifestyle of all of this hard to relate to sometimes, but it was a fun little glimpse into another world.

On the book jacket, it describes this drama with the ZipZap app, a place where anonymous gossip and scandal gets posted, revealing people’s secrets and lies. I know this is something that happens with schools these days, so it’s topical, but this plot doesn’t happen til half way through the book. When it does, it moves along pretty nicely and creates a lot of complications, but I would say that with this being an ensemble type story, there isn’t really a simple describable plot. It’s more of a year in the life of the school, with the student death the year before hanging over everyone. We get fractured relationships, budding new romance, friendship drama and gossip, jockeying for social cachet and love triangles. All par for the course of high school life. It feels very gossipy, in a fun, not mean spirited way.

Annoyingly, the plot revolving around Cinnamon, the girl who ended her life the previous year and which overhangs the whole book, has some plot points that feel like they should resolve here at the end, and instead when you finish reading, you realise there will be a book 2. I can see this making a series that people will really like, but I felt like not finding out the secret that was teased meant the ending felt a little anticlimactic for me.

I also, and this is just me, didn’t love the English Lit bashing that went on in this book. While I’m all for diverse reading, I don’t think that means that we need to say edgy things about Thoreau or Dickens. It felt a little icky to me.

I think this book is entertaining enough. I think it could mean that Hildebrand reaches a newer, younger market while still reaching her previous readers, which is fun, and it launches Shelby Cunningham as a writer pretty well. I did find myself a little bored or un-invested at times. With the ensemble cast type plotting, I just wasn’t drawn in enough into all the different plots. There wasn’t one MC really to get locked into their journey for me. With other books like this, I have been invested the whole time, so I can’t quite put my finger on what wasn’t working for me here. I did think it picked up a little bit more in the second half though.

Read It If: for fans of Hildebrand, here is her new two book series. I think if you like gossipy, teen boarding school and faculty stories, this is fine, but it wasn’t as entertaining and gripping for me as I would have liked.

Thank you to HBG Canada for the copy of this book for review.