Though the premise and characters had me hopeful, the story just never delivered on the potential for me. The story dragged, the dialogue felt awkward and the characters never grew on me.

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher. What a great novel about a boarding school in the Virginia countryside, not the sort of book I would normally read but saying that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I did not enjoy this book. To simplistic and underdeveloped. The description of the book and the cover made it seem to be something that I would particularly enjoy, but it didn't live up to my expectations. Thank you for the opportunity to read/review this book.

When described as an all girl boarding school with a resident ghost on premises, the book has a certain gothic promise. But it doesn’t play out that way. It’s more of a straight forward drama featuring the students of Briarwood (past and present) and their teachers set against the backdrop of a peculiar business snafu. The latter is actually a very interesting story. Apparently in the mid 1990s Disney has the idea of creating a themed park in Virginia dedicated to America as in dedicated to simplifying, dumbing down, dressing up in glitter and otherwise disneyfying American tragic turbulent past. How do you like them apples? Good thing this was set during a more reasonable time where terrible ideas didn’t get just greenlighted because they might create jobs and other considerations were present and given significance. (Even though in the end it was probably money talking, it’s nice to fantasize about a saner world. Nostalgia and all that). So that was actually fascinating in that stranger than fiction way. The plot narrative otherwise was less fascinating or really fascinating just isn’t an appropriate word. The book drew heavily on parallels between the girls throughout time, the way their lives echoed each other, all centered around a Pulitzer winning play by Briarwood’s own alumna, and relied mainly on the characters themselves to do all the heavy lifting as it were. It was a fairly mild story, realistic, well written, very enjoyable and such a quick read too. In a word…nice. Although nice can have negative connotations such as too bland, not especially distinguished or interesting, this isn’t the case here. Literally, I mean it was nice in the best possible definition of nice. A pleasant read. There, that’s presumably more complimentary than nice. A very likeable read. Another good one. Ok, you get the idea. Thanks Netgalley.