This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Every year there it seems a different theme emerges in fiction. Last year it was twins (The Grammarians, The Vanishing Half, Thin Girls), but this year, although it’s only January, I have three novels in my winter reading that are about girls’ boarding schools. What is it about that subject that entices those of us who were no more likely to attend one than go into outer space? Whatever dark psychological well holds the answer is plumbed in the novel The Divines. The first clue comes in the present-day opening pages, when the narrator, Josephine, shares

I haven’t spoken to a Divine in fourteen years, maybe more, despite there being ample online opportunities these days to reconnect with my former peers should I so wish. I don’t.

Aah. So, this isn’t going to be a wistful stroll down memory lane. It would seem the girls at St. John the Divine’s were a be a bit more divisive. Or maybe a bit more real. Either way, Josephine is the guide.

When the novel opens Josephine goes by Sephine, having dropped the name Joe as a final remnant of her years at St. John’s. All the girls at school went by male names—another clannish way to differentiate themselves from the locals. She’s now a newlywed, married to Jürgen, a kind, boisterous, decent man whom she loves, but with whom she’s shared nothing of her past. On their honeymoon she has a sudden urge to visit the town where the school used to be. It’s this side trip in her adult life that propels her back into her teen years. From that point onward, we’re pulled between the quiet accomplished writer that is Sephine and the awkward, confused teenager that is Joe.

The Divines are what the girls call themselves, but a less apt nickname is hard to imagine. The school is an elite one in England, but its students revel in being the worst at everything. Athletic ability, sportsmanship, academics, manners, compassion are of no interest. They only area where they excel is in a fierce loyalty to each other, but even that is bent to their own rules in that one of the people they despise and bully most is another student. A student who Josephine inexplicably gets paired with as her roommate. It is this new year and situation that foments all the events that follow in The Divines. Events that lead, in part, to the school being shut down.

In The Divines Ellie Eaton creates a cast that is almost uniformly dislikable, which is no small feat. Even the girl who comes in for the most abuse from the other girls is a dreadful person. All of this might lead you to believe I’m not recommending the novel, but that’s not the case. Without a single character to root for comes a welcome detachment, giving the novel an anthropological feel and, more startling, an unsettling pull of recognition. As Joe worries over a ‘feeling’ she has about her best friend it sounds familiar—who didn’t spend hours wondering if other girls still liked them? Or worry about being different?

Eaton enhances this emotional stew by introducing the issue of memory. Sephine recounts her years as a Divine with a crisp finality. There’s no wavering in her recollections, but they don’t always jibe with some of Joe’s moments or the truth of others. One of these misalignments is the crux to the novel, leading to questions about Sephine’s reliability as a narrator. It’s Eaton’s careful probing into the psyche, not just of teens, but of women in general that kept me reading The Divines. Also, an ending that made me grimly laugh out loud.

Upon finishing, I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about this book. It’s a more complicated aftertaste than a normal didn’t love it/didn’t hate it feeling. To help me distill my thoughts I looked at other reviews on Good Reads. I was (pleasantly) surprised by how many others felt the same (reviewer Sam wrote what I cannot). What struck me, aside from the viciousness of teen/preteen girls (which I still recall decades later), was how much one event handicapped Jo-at least emotionally-and did not affect another girl much (no spoiler here). How childhood events are formative for some of the participants and not for others is very interesting.

I'm blown away by this book. Getting through it felt a bit like running through a maze: dead ends, confusion, frustration, mystery.

We go back and forth in time from 1996 to today (I presume) but all the while following the same character, Josephine. It's almost like two different people. In 1996, Josephine generally goes by "Joe." A student at an "elite" boarding school. Girls attend like their mothers before them, etc. But just like every boarding school horror story you've heard or read, it's cutthroat. The girls here all go by male nicknames, hence "Joe" and nonconformity is a real issue, if you're not with them, you're against them. The girls in Joe's year, mainly pick on one student, Gerry Lake. A girl who doesn't fit it, doesn't pick a man's name, doesn't hang out with them, and doesn't even try to be friends. She's a competitive figure skater, has a terrible temper, and honestly, that's all the rest of the girls know or need to know. They don't need to know much beyond this to find things to torment her over. And in her fifth year, Joe gets saddled with Gerry as a room mate. This is the tip of the iceberg as the year unfolds and Joe is isolated from her former best friends more and more. She meets a townie, Lauren, and against all status quo at the school, forms a friendship of sort. Although when you read about it, you wonder if Joe has any healthy relationships. Lauren seems just as foreboding and controlling as Joe's boarding school friends. It seems everything these girls do is an endeavor to cause mayhem and see how far they can go before getting into serious trouble.

You could get whiplash from the time-travel to Joe's present day where she goes by Sephine and seems entirely different. Something happened in her last year at school, this we know, and she cut off all communication with anyone from the school. Whatever it was that happened has obviously affected her long term. In fact, she mentions "boarding school syndrome," which her mother scoffs at but if you simply do a google search yourself, you'll find material on easily. It seems apparent that while Sephine may have been able to distance herself from her boarding school days, that distance is closing in on her and fast. Over a few short years, the poise and ambition Sephine has honed seems to be crumbling.

This was at times crass and I found my face in a disgusted grimace often. But it was compelling and page-turning all the same. I'd give a warning to any friends that may be unsettled or turned off by rather blunt and crude descriptions of sex and sexual acts. There is also bullying abound in this book.

At the book's end I'm finding myself puzzling over "what just happened?" I'm going back and questioning Josephine, her memory, and her mental clarity at every turn. I really enjoyed Ellie Eaton's writing style. Some of the vocabulary she used throughout was impressive and fun to learn new words - it also further developed Josephine as a character, how she was raised, the words we all use that can sort us into different categories (like a Divine or a townie). I'll be interested to read whatever else Eaton publishes. I'd be curious to learn about the inspiration behind this novel and what drove her to write it.

The Divines follows Josephine as she finds herself confronting her past and reliving the tumultuous last weeks at her British boarding school, St. John the Divine. It starts off fast with the violent events that generated a huge scandal at the school and then takes you back to the weeks leading up to it, with her narrating the story to her new husband. Her book is beautifully written, full of suspense and all the drama of the volatile female relationships of Josephine’s past. It builds to a thrilling ending, and is one that was hard to put down!
.
.
Thank you to @williammorrowbooks and @netgalley for the opportunity to read this book ahead of release!

I didn’t have much expectations for this one. It was a good drama story. I kind of thought there’d be a huge twist. But i was not expecting the ending. I feel like this was a story expressing how stressful school and your peers can be and how hugely things in childhood can impact your life. I felt bad for the main character. She felt traumatized by what happened at her school and it largely impacted her & if the adults would have been more forthcoming with information her life may have been different. It shows how much privilege can effect a person. The people in this story were so self involved that they didn’t see outside of themselves. And cared too much what others thought. I feel like this was a great coming of age story.

St. John the Divine was a private girls’ school once located in Oxfordshire England. Generations of wealthy young girls attended. Now, many if the buildings are gone and the others are used for flats and business offices.

Josephine was a student when she was younger. She was called Jo then. Newly married to Jurgen, she stops by the site of the school and at his request, she begins to tell him about life at the school.

The Divines were rich, sexually precocious, called each other by boys’ names, and the locals hated them. They were from rich families, entitled, and spoiled. Many of them have mothers who went to the school as well.

I really expected something big to come out of this story but I was left with a feeling of Who Cares? Teenage girls are all over the place. Some of them tend to be the bullies and others are the bullied. They feel gawky and unsure of themselves, contending with acne and hormonal changes. I have read other books about boarding schools that had a good plot so I was truly looking forward to reading this. Now, I feel let down. Bratty girls some of whom never grew up. Sorry. Not my cup of tea.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The following is my review, as posted on Goodreads:

I received an ARC through the Book Club Girls Early Reads program from Harper Collins Publishers.

I’m sorry to say, but this book was absolutely awful. There was not one single likable character in the entire book. They were a bunch of insufferable, entitled, selfish brat bullies who used their perceived status to make life absolutely miserable for everyone around them. I read for enjoyment, but this book made me feel disgusted and angry at their awful behavior. If there was ANYTHING redeemable whatsoever in this book, I wouldn’t be so annoyed about wasting time finishing this book when I could’ve been reading something much better.

I will never recommend this book to anyone.

So, unfortunately I was not a fan of this story. Where I am sure there is a demographic for this type of book, I didn’t enjoy it. Much like Catherine House it left me confused and wondering why I finished it.
I didn’t connect with any of the characters nor did I have a ton of compassion for them. They were mean bullies as children and grew up into mean bullies.
I wanted for Sephine to go through this massive transformation but it didn’t happen. Her husband was bizarre and her mother was the worst. I guess it’s all about the cycle of abuse (for lack of a better word) but I really just didn’t get what I was supposed to get out of it and I was super mad how it ended.

The Divines takes you a journey between Josephine's (Joe) adult life and the memories of her days in boarding school. The book opens with her physically seeing her boarding school for the first time in many years. From there the author writes reality vs. perception brilliantly. The memories and versions of the past that these characters create or recall are to protect themselves from trauma, the trauma they experienced and at times the trauma they were responsible for.

We follow the main character in her adult life as she becomes obsessed with the past. It consumes her thoughts and memories leading her to endless hours of internet searching. The story follows her unpacking what she thought happened, her interactions at the end of the book during two events help unpack some of the emotional baggage Joe carries around.

For the most part I enjoyed the book, I feel like it ended abruptly, there could have been a little more substance. I needed a little more closure from the book, it felt to open ended and a little messy. I give this 3.5 stars.

For some reason, boarding school books really appealnto me. This novel had characters that were flawed but absolutely fascinating. I loved reading of the school traditions, the angst of female teen friendships, and the conflicts between town and school. There was an element of suspense. Al was explained at the end.

A true page turner!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of The Divines. I was very excited to read this, but unfortunately I did not enjoy it. The main character, Josephine goes from present day to the 1990’s when she attended a British boarding school, Most of the girls at the boarding school were presented as mean girls with constant bullying and destructive. I felt like the ending fell flat for me.

The Divines is a very intriguing debut novel about a woman in her 30s who starts to unravel her memories of a traumatic event that happened at her English boarding school. This book definitely fits into the "dark academia" category, but I thought the character development was higher quality than a lot of similar books I have read.

The book has a focus on privilege; how we perceive our privilege growing up and also how that impacts us as adults, that kept me thinking for days after I read it. I recommend this to anyone who likes "dark" books - think Gillian Flynn meets Secret History.

Teenage girls can be mean and ruthless, as illustrated by this group at their private school St John the Divine. In this coming of age novel, the girls get up to all the usual antics, gossip, sex, smoking, but then there is a scandal that ends up closing the school. Years later, Jo replays memories of the time and obsesses on how what they did at the time has far reaching effects into their adult lives. While compelling, I had a hard time liking any of the characters.

3.5 Complex Boarding School Stars

This complex story is difficult to categorize, it’s a bit coming-of-age, escaping the past, and with a bit of a mystery thrown in. This debut novel really got me thinking about perception and reality and how we reconcile ourselves with the past.

There are two storylines, one is set at a boarding school in England, St. John the Divine, and features the privileged girls who are students and call themselves The Divines. There is a long history and legacy with mothers and grandmothers attending the school as well. This storyline was a bit uncomfortable to read, there is the rivalry with the Townies, the level of cruelty between the girls, and the lack of discipline from the teachers. There is definitely a hierarchy at the school and the author builds a bit of mystery around events that happened. Josephine, or Joe, is the main character. It was interesting that all the girls had nicknames that were boys’ names and had perfected the flip of hair that marked them as Divine. Joe seems to feel like she was frequently left out of things at school, especially when she had a roommate who was outside the circle of popular girls.

The other storyline is set in Los Angeles, 15 years later, and more about Joe trying to make sense of her school years now that she is a wife and mother. The past seems to be haunting her present self and she ends up at a school reunion confronting many of the perceptions she has about her school years. She seems to remember herself and events differently than the other women.

At the end of the book, I was left wondering if you can really change? Can you make up for things you’ve done in your past or can some things never be forgiven? While I didn’t like Josephine, she was an interesting character!

I was excited to begin this highly anticipated literary fiction novel, and this read just completely enthralled me and I couldn't put it down. It's set in present-day LA with flashbacks to a British boarding school in the '90s and this coming of age novel explores the destructive relationships between teenage girls. In the flashback, the girls of the elite St. John boarding school are notorious for pushing boundaries, their sharp tongues, and chasing boys. Now in her thirties, Josephine hasn't spoken to any of her former peers in fifteen years ever since the school closed in the wake of a mysterious scandal. During her honeymoon, she takes a detour to the old school grounds, which brings up all sorts of memories of that time and the horrid things they got away with. This visit provokes all sorts of recollections about the school's final weeks, leading up to the big scandal, and her violet secret at its center. As she remembers more and more, her life, her sense of self, and her marriage all crumble around her. This book is full of rich, exciting language that draws you in. Josephine has such an intriguing first-person point of view and voice. It has such a compelling tone, and it gets so engaging that makes this read hard to put down.

This coming of age boarding school suspense dives into the world of the right of passage from young adult to adulthood through sex, secrets, lies, and drama! This is one of those reads where it brings you back to your childhood ways frozen in time where you thought that is where your life was at it's prime before you settled down into everyday existence. Jo is the main character and start with adulthood to then looking back focusing most of the book in her past. Haunted by her past Jo returns to where it all began for her, bridging the gap into becoming a woman. This is a compelling self-discovery read, and the "Divines" that make us and break us at the same time. Everyone at some point either had a "click" or wanted to be apart of an infamous one in their time, but what was the cost to the lies, secrets, drama, and addiction to the dark ways of teenage girls. The rich kids always have so much suspenseful privileged scandals to pry open. I liked the whole Townies and Divines rivalry, made it feel a little like a modern day boarding school Grease! Overall it was a great read! Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read and review this book!

How does who we were in our past impact how we move through our lives? How much of what we remember is really what happened — or merely a story our brains have weaved to help us cope with moments in our past that inevitably shape who we are? These are questions that surface while reading @ellie.m.eaton’s debut novel, #TheDivines.

Josephine (Jo) is an unlikely and unlikeable protagonist. She’s a woman so wrapped in her past at a boarding school and member of ‘The Divine’ click, she barely seems present in her current life. The novel jumps between current day and Jo’s new marriage and motherhood, back to scenes from her past with The Divines that were pivotal in shaping what occupies much of her current attention. She holds onto relics of the past, constantly ‘stalks’ her fellow classmates to see how their lives have shaped-up, and seems unnaturally obsessed with a wrong she feels she committed against her dorm-mate — who happened to be the unfortunate target of all the mean girls in school.

Eaton does a great job of describing just how impossible it is to fit into a clique as a teenager — and how so much of our lives are spent in our heads. Can we fully be present, when we’re constantly digesting all we’ve been through? This is a question that will keep resurfacing as you read the book. Eaton’s ‘Divines’ has made just about every ‘Notable Books for 2021’ — and there’s a reason. Don’t expect a beach read, but if you enjoy reading books that make you dig deep into your own coming-of-age experiences — this is one you’ll enjoy.

The Divines was basically a train wreck that I couldn't look away from. All of the characters were detestable, their morals were questionable, their attitudes were horrendous, their behavior was deplorable... and yet, I could not look away.

We follow Jo/Sephine/Josephine throughout the story, alternating between her time as a "Divine" teenager at St. John the Divine school, and also as a thirty-something year old who can't quite seem to forget her past. I do have to say I was very much more involved with the scenarios where Jo was in school than as an adult. Her adult character seemed too brooding and morose for my liking, and she seemed like a very spoiled, bratty woman.

This novel was full of secrets, lies, and dark themes that tend to pull me in and hook me to a story. My only issue with this novel was that the ending seemed... unfinished? rushed? incomplete.

I do not feel like the ending wrapped up anything that happened between Jo and Lauren. I wish there would have been more closure with that. I wish that (although it's not in the ending) there was more of an importance to the relationship with Stuart. It felt kind of rushed and anti-climactic after the build up to the... well, we'll call it the main event in their... relationship?

I also felt like the "scandal" that this book promises was really not much of a scandal at all, and was actually quite passed over. For being the main focus of this book, it seemed to have a very small part in the story. It was basically described in a portion of one chapter and referenced several times prior to the event actually happening. I was pretty let down with how the entire thing played out, that there wasn't more of a history behind what led up to the "scandal." (I also think "scandal" is the wrong word, because "scandal" makes me think of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky and that is not even close to what happens here.)

Anyway, aside from some things I wish were different, I did quite enjoy this book. 4 stars, I can see this being a popular book of 2021.

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins for the review copy.

I’m not quite sure how to describe the tone or mood of this book. It focuses on protagonist Josephine at two points in her life - in the mid to late 90s at a boarding school in England and later as a recently married woman navigating the world. The girls she attending boarding school with (nicknamed Divines after the school’s name - St. John of the Divine) are mean and snobby and treat each other, the school staff, and the residents of the town in which they are located pretty terribly. Josephine (called Joe then, because for some reason Divines have a tradition of using male names), spends her last year at the school kind of on the outside of things, assigned to room with a girl no one likes (who seems a little abrasive but honestly pretty much fine), befriending a townie girl named Lauren, and developing a crush on Lauren’s older brother, who works at the school. One of the things that I thought was handled really effectively here was the concept that how you remember yourself in the past may be completely different than how others saw you. Joe (who goes by Sephine after leaving school) saw herself as an awkward semi-outcast, and she did all kinds of mean and generally distasteful things to try to fit in, but others saw her as a leader, that cool girl that people are terrified of. All of this comes out when she starts thinking about school in advance of a reunion and after she goes to visit the old school site on a honeymoon road trip and a townie spits on her for being a former Divine. Overall I found this sad but fairly compelling, told with a tone of cool detachment.