Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Audio for the audio ARC of The Divines.

First, Imogen Church is an awesome narrator. I've listened to her before when I read The Woman in Cabin 10. Second, The Divines reminded me a bit like Normal People by Sally Rooney in that The Divines is a bit weird and cringy at times but the characters also feel extremely real like you are reading their journal instead of a book. If you liked Normal People then you may like The Divines as well.

As you read or listen you are uncovering more and more about Jo and about her past experiences in her boarding school education along with her current life. It was hard for me to pause the audiobook, I wanted to keep listening to find out what was going to happen next and how all my questions were going to be answered. I can see why Jo is haunted about her past as a few of the plot points to the end are very saddening. Towards the end though, I am still left with a few new questions about Jo in her present life which I don't mind that the answers were not clear, but if that's something that bothers you, you might find the ending unsatisfying.

It definitely makes you think about your own high school experience and if those around you have good memories of their interactions with you or bad memories.

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½⭐️ (4.5 stars)

“The divines” are the epitome of privilege, students at the elite boarding school, St John the Divine, these girls have it all. Equally feared by their teachers as they are hated by the townies where their school is situated, the divines believe themselves to be above all. Consequences can’t touch them.

That is, until Gerry Lake winds up sprawled out on the grass lawn, unresponsive, and rushed to Emergency.

Taking place across two timelines, The Divines tells the story of Josephine – or Jo as she’s referred to during her English boarding school days, and Sephine as she’s referred to forever after. Josephine is determined to separate these two parts of her life, considering herself a different person than who she was all those years ago. But no matter how much she tries to forget, memories of what went down that fateful junior year continue to bombard her, making her question whether people can really change.

Being a huge fan of literary fiction, women’s fiction and coming-of-age stories, throw in the fact I have a soft spot for boarding school stories and unreliable narrators, The Divines was pretty much my ideal book to read. So you can bet how thrilled I was when I was accepted to read and review an audiobook e-arc of this novel on Netgalley!

Maybe it’s just because I’m biased, but I thought The Divines was a fabulous read! Very much in the ‘dark academia’ genre, The Divines includes all the typical tropes one would expect; clique loyalty, peer pressure, classism, and a mysterious death the plot centres around. But where The Divines really thrives is in the way Eaton deconstructs these tropes and critiques them through the lens of her protagonist, Josephine.

Josephine is a deeply unreliable narrator, though it takes time for the reader to realize as much. Watching her lives unravel, simultaneously in both present and past time lines, the reader sees how her teenage insecurity, the pressure she feels to fit in, and her dislike, almost hate, towards those who choose not to, turns to unchecked cruelty, with deadly consequences. I loved how Eaton plays with the character’s different perspectives of the same events, making the reader, and Josephine herself, not able to trust what she remembers.

The only thing stopping me from giving this book a full 5 star review is the fact that I felt like something was missing. In the part of the novel where characters begin to reunite in the present timeline, it seemed like there was a key character reunion missing – one that was even hinted at in the book, but never came to pass. I felt a little cheated of that interaction when I finished the novel; hoping until the very end that it would somehow get included.

And, with two very important characters in this novel turning out to be gay, it just felt like a missed opportunity to not explore that more directly.

Nevertheless, I’m being so picky with my critiques of this novel just because I enjoyed it so much. Eaton shows she has a lot of potential as a debut author, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next.

Thank you to the publisher, HarperAudio, and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC of this audiobook. All thoughts are my own.

Did not enjoy this at all. I did like the premise, which is why I requested this novel. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to review this arc. I typically enjoy books set in boarding schools or high schools/colleges, but this was a miss for me. I found it difficult to care about the characters but the narrator seems to take for granted that the reader wants to hear more about these people and her memories of them. An egotistic narrator? I found the narrator off putting and the stories about the girls at the school not as interesting as a result. Maybe if the narrator had been more likable I would have been more interested in her stories? I also did not enjoy her descriptions of her current life.

I enjoyed the actual story but found the writing style to be a bit difficult to follow which is likely just me as I find books with alternating time periods to be difficult to follow. Overall though, I would recommend this book to fans of YA.

What it’s about: Teenage girls from an elite boarding school and a scandal that leads to the school shutting down. Josephine hasn’t spoken to another Divine in 15 years, but as she starts digging through her memories, especially those that lead to a violent secret, she is once again taken back to her teenage years. As she uncovers more, her past begins to destroy her present.
...
What I liked: I really enjoyed how this book flipped back and forth between present day Sephine and teenage Jo. The subtle name change is a beautiful detail by Eaton that separates how Sephine sees herself- past Jo was someone else entirely. As the novel continues you can feel how each Divine memory begins to affect her life in her 30s. She is almost trapped in the past, trying to hide the secrets from her husband. But you can see how much she cherishes her past, even though she tries to ignore it. A very readable coming of age novel that accurately depicts those rebellious teenage years. The ending left me shook!
...
What I didn’t like: It took me some time to connect to the novel, but then I had to keep going to unravel the mystery woven throughout.

I’m... honestly not sure what to say about this book. The flashbacks were interesting, and I wish they were more developed. The present day felt a bit pointless, and the ending left me unsatisfied. Though it sounds like I didn’t enjoy this book at all, I truly did! The biggest qualm I had was how often Josephine brought up “they were townies and we were divine.” This had the potential to be a really impactful statement but it winds up being overused.

Overall I’d give the writing a 4/5, the plot a 3.5/5, and the characters a 1.5/5. There’s virtually no likable characters, and no major character development or growth. I do highly recommend listening to the audiobook if you decide to pick this one up, the narrator definitely made this way easier to get through.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an ALC of this book.

This is the story of a group teenage girls, The Divines, and their private and very expensive school. The narration flits between one of the girls while she is at school and also as a grownup woman who is recently married. She is telling the story of her friendships, boy obsession, and the events that lead up to the death of one of her fellow students (not a spoiler, this is revealed in the first chapter). I really loved this book, it’s a great combination of female relationships, coming of age themes, later milestones, and the horrid things that teenagers do to each other when given the chance and the inclination. Each action directed at Gerri Lake (sp? I read via audiobook) sounds, in isolation, like a silly and minor insult. However as the story unfolds and the insults build both in number and severity, the cruelty of The Divines becomes apparent. I wouldn’t say the sense of unease is creeping in this book, it’s clear from the outset, but it does build rather deliciously. Anyone that has been to high school will recognise this nasty behaviour. Anyone lucky enough to attend a private high school will also recognise the top notes of laziness and narcissism that abound in the offspring of the ultra privileged. I received the audiobook for free from NetGalley in return for an honest review. The narration was very good, pitched perfectly, no irritating tics, voices, or accents to be found. I would go so far as to say that the voice acting was excellent, a rarity in audiobooks. One thing, and perhaps it is the NetGalley app, which is rather glitchy, but I found the reading to be very slow, I had to listen to it on x1.5 speed for it to sound natural.

I think I would really love this book if I read the physical book. The premise is great, and the story sounded amazing from what I understood. However, I had a lot of trouble understanding the narrators accent so I don’t feel like I can give a fair account of the book from listening to the audio.

I definitely think the audiobook is the way to go with The Divines (I could not get through the written version at all.) I still didn't like the story as an audiobook, but the narration was well done and helped me understand two two storylines in the book. I was disappointed in this book as a whole. It's rare that I don't like a story set around a boarding school, but this one took way too long to get off the ground. There was too much set up and discussion and not enough happening to people I care about. I won't be listing this book in my 2021 book page on my site because I cannot recommend it and I only mention books I can recommend. For that reason I will also not review it on Amazon or Goodreads. I did, however, do a Instagram story with the cover. (Which is a fabulous cover.)

I absolutely loved the narration of this book and while I got a little frustrated with the slow ramp up to the "reveal" of the events that this book led up to, overall I found this book to be a compelling coming of age novel and painfully realistic depiction of female school age relationships. A very promising debut!

The narration is painfully slow (quite unnaturally so) and the netgalley app does not really work correctly at speeds other than 1.0, so I found it to be unreadable on the app. Got another copy after publication and listened at 1.5.

As for the story, this didn’t work for me. Unlikeable characters full of angst and privilege.

Josephine is newly married and visits the ground of her old boarding school, St. John the Divine, in the UK while on her honeymoon. While in a dentist office that was the former school chapel, Josephine gets called a nasty word by a local woman when that woman realizes Josephine used to attend the school. This starts Josephine down the path of reflecting on her time at the school. She hasn't spoken to her fellow Divines (what the girls called themselves) in 15 years. There is hazy foreshadowing that something bad happened there in Josephine's final year.

The novel switches back and forth from a semester at school in the 1990s and current day where Josephine is making her life with her husband in California working as a freelance writer. The parts set at the boarding school were more interesting to me than the ones set in present day. We learn that St John the Divine is a posh boarding school and that the girls that go there don't quite get along with the working class townies. Josephine feels isolated from her best friends when she is assigned to room with a girl who is seen as an outsider. Joe, as her friends call her, ends up making friends with a local girls, Lauren, and develops a crush on her old brother who works at the school.

The book is structured as Josephine's present day downwards spiral as she remembers her time at the school. There are messages in the book about bullying, the divide between the upper and working class, and sexuality. The flashbacks were the stronger storyline in this book for me. Jospehine's realizations in the "present day" were a bit perplexing. Years passed by between different present day scenes and she still seems stuck in her reflection rut. The whole thing left me in a bit of a haze, and perhaps that was the point. The author shows promise but I feel like this book was not as well executed as it could have been. It is definitely told from Josephine's perspective with HER biases, so maybe that is why things aren't as well defined as they could have been. I will keep my eye out for future releases by Eaton so that I can give them a read.

I listened to the book on audio and the narrator had a pleasant British accent that helped bring Josephine to life. It's worth a listen if you like boarding school stories or books set in academia.

First of all, Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to listen to this book! This was one of my highly anticipated releases of the year and I was taken with the story from the first page narrated by the brilliant Imogen Church. The way that Eaton describes the characters and setting in such detail giving readers a dynamic novel centered around a elite British boarding school. Moving between past and present, reflecting on the main character's (Josephine) time at St. John the Divine, the story depicts an honest account of that time many adolescents face where some will do anything or nothing at all to fit in with the crowd while realizing as you age that what mattered the most then doesn't matter now.

The Divines is a coming-of-age story set at an elite, all-girls, British boarding school, St John the Divine, in the 1990s. The girls who attend the school refer to themselves as "Divines", a term that is indicative of the sharp class divide between the girls themselves and the people of the local community. The girls are conceited, rude, contemptuous, and absolutely terrible to the staff of the school. In the style of a psychological thriller, from the start of the novel we know ~something~ happened to one of the girls that lead to the closure of the school.

Josephine (who goes by "Joe" during her school days, and "Sephine" in adulthood) hasn't spoken to any of her former schoolmates in 15 years. However, she finds herself ruminating on her time at the school, the version of herself that she was in adolescence, and the ways the Divines both tried to protect themselves from trauma and inflicted trauma on each other. Eaton explores topics of teenage sexuality, adolescent friendship (and cruelty), class conflict, and how the events of our youth can continue to haunt us. As someone who was once a teenage girl, Eaton's portrayal of that experience is sharply accurate - it is unnerving and cringe-inducing to read.

A note on the audiobook: I wasn't sure about her narration at first, but Imogen Church's voice really grew on me, and by about half way through the audiobook I became convinced that hers is the perfect voice for Josephine.

This was a great look at the elite world of Brittish Boarding School life! The audio was done really well & easy to listen to ( I did at a 2 speed without getting left behind or lost). I enjoyed how the book gave a look at Josephines current life as well as glimpses at her past, how she grew up, life as a Divine. Overall a great coming of age tale with a fantastic ending!

3.5 Stars

Thank you Netgalley and Harpers Audio for the ALC of this book.

The Divines was a look into one girls past (Josephine) and how her memory of the time she spent in an elite boarding school molded and shaped her future self. St John the Divine was a school full of hair flipping, mean spirited teenage girls who spent their time smoking cigarettes, drinking and chasing around boys. Being a Divine was being part of an exclusive club. As teenage girls do there was bullying and girls were ostracized for not fitting the mold. Josephine now in her 30's is caught up in her memories of her time as a Divine and keeps replaying one horrible night. She returns to her old stomping ground only to find her memories are not what they seem. As she becomes fixated on her teenage identity she realizes everything may not be as she remembers it and who she really is starts to crumble.

I enjoyed this book but throughout most of it I was thinking oh this won't really be a memorable read but then the final few chapters just add so much depth to the story. It was a slow burn but you are rewarded with a great ending that has you really reflecting on everything you just read. I found it fascinating to think about how our memories can mold and change and we can believe certain truths only to then realize they were never true at all.

Having seen this book grace several "Most Anticipated in 2021" reads, I was very pleased to receive an advance reader's copy a few days before publication. The adult narrator, Josephine, introduces the reader to her domesticated life as a newly-wed as the book opens during her blissful honeymoon to her caring, virtuous Austrian husband. On the same trip, she convinces him to make the detour to her old girlhood haunt, the grounds of a formerly elite girls boarding school - St. John the Divine - which mysteriously closed in ignominy during Jo's last days at the school. Since that day in the late 90's, Jo has cut all ties to the school and to her "friends", suggesting she has buried a deep trauma occurring during that period. Unfortunately, the trip down memory lane causes Josephine to spiral into an obsession with the school and its attendant pupils (former friends) as she relates most of the events that happened to her concerned husband and to the reader via flashbacks.

The narration then jumps between present day, 30-something Josephine, and her awkward, introverted teen self who recalls events in flashbacks. Jo strives to please her aloof, mean girl "best friend" while building a new friendship witha local girl (a "townie", as the Divine students derisively refer to locals in the book) that becomes a salvation for Jo until it too disintegrates. This is where the book began to go pear-shaped, as it were, for me. There was a significant portion of the story spent on nothing at all - just re-tellings of quotidian details of girls' lives in school. The class warfare between the rich and narcissistic "Divines" and the poorer "townies" who loath them became an annoying hindrance to the story. It did not help that the narrator seemed to be drawling the phrase, "We were Divine" seemingly in every chapter. I realize it was meant to be an ironic play on words involving the school's name and the girls' warped self-perception, but it became cloying to hear repeatedly thoughout.

There is a significant plot point involving at least one St. John's student - Jo's roommate - who is an outcast and definitely not "Divine". Anyone bullied mercilessly in high school might find the treatment of this girl not just distasteful, but triggering. Jo's whole identity starts to hinge on what happened to this girl and by the end of the novel, she is obsessed (again) thinking about the events at the school....TWENTY YEARS AGO. I found this disturbing and incredibly annoying that a grown woman could devolve into the silly, immature teenager she used to be, just by unpacking memories of the school during that initial detour.

When I read the (abrupt) conclusion, I was left with such a strong feeling of dissatisfaction. Not only was there not a SINGLE likeable major character in the 300+ pages - they were all self-involved twits - but there was no one climax or significant event that surprised me as a reader. There was not much by way of events at all, and I felt the book ran on for an extraneous 50+ pages.

So sadly, I cannot recommend this book despite the intriguing premise. But fans of boarding school stories, or who don't mind revisiting the reminders of teenage-hood when many of us flitted in our own narcissistic orbits - might find this entertaining.

Thank you to #NetGalley and Harper Audio for the advanced copy of The Divines in exchange for an honest review.

“What am I supposed to tell him? That since becoming a mother I exist in a state of perpetual unease? That the world seems to me overwhelmingly dangerous and chaotic. How of all the multitudinous threats posed to him and the baby: earthquakes, rising sea levels, drunk drivers, melanomas, pandemics, zealots with semi automatics. It’s something else I’m most afraid of; the past slowly coiling around us, the snake in the crib.” - Ellie Eaton, The Divines

This book is unsettling, eerie, and deeply compelling. The story in The Divines is told by a woman named Josephine in alternating narratives. Some chapters are told from Jo’s perspective as a teenager at a failing all girls boarding school in the 90’s, and others as Sephine in her adult years as she struggles with marriage and motherhood. Listening to this story brought me back painfully to the sensitive years of teenagehood when everything feels so much more visceral than it does as an adult. It raises questions about how one sees oneself versus how one is seen and how we are all unreliable narrators in our own memory. Ellie Eaton is able to distill some of the common experiences of teenage girls and highlight how the disastrous effects of the self focused narrative can unravel themselves into adulthood.

I’d highly recommend reading this as an audiobook! Imogen Church is a wonderful narrator for this dark and dramatic story. As an American, the distinction between accents and tone was striking to listen to and added so much depth to the story that I otherwise would have totally missed.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Audio for providing early access to The Divines!

Recommended for: Drama and Suspense Lovers, people who enjoy great narration.

Categories: Realistic Fiction, Coming of Age

Content Warnings (may contain spoilers): Bullying, Adolescent Trauma, Drugs, Sexuality, Body Image Issues, Substance Abuse

Just spectacular.

The Divines is about private boarding schools, female friendships (toxic and not), maturity, sex, identity, and personal growth.

Jo is our main character and through her past and present we learn about the fundamental aspects of who she thinks she is and who she thinks she was. The pacing is perfect, with every scene feeding more of what you know when you need to know it, still being compelling. You're going to hate some of the characters in the book and I think that's the point. Between teenage rebellion, mob mentality, class tensions, and peer pressure, this story is so grounded and beautifully-written.

I empathise with Jo a lot; I had no IDEA who I was when I was young and learning about what I wanted and actually thought, and thinking about everything as an adult, everything was just so well-captured by Ellie Eaton (even though I'm not posh or British and didn't get a private education).

Everything felt so completely real, it was utterly engrossing.

Imogen Church narrated the audiobook and she was PERFECT. Her accents, her delivery, the emphasis on every word that needed it were just *chef's kiss.* I will absolutely be looking for more of her work.

I very very highly recommend this book.

I received a copy of this audiobook from NetGalley and HarperAudio in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.

Josephine, along with her mother, is a Divine, meaning she attended St John the Divine, an elite private girls boarding school, at least until it went bankrupt after a horrible incident occurred on school grounds. Now married, with a young daughter, she is invited to a reunion at the old campus, and she starts to remember and revisit the past. Jo and her friends, whom all referred to themselves a with a shortened more masculine form of their name, were terrible bullies, harassing the lower years and anyone not part of their friend group. When Jo meets and befriends a townie, Lauren, who older brother works at the school, she realizes how awful the girls are, but still doesn’t make changes in her own life and that leads to terrible consequences.

Overall, this wasn’t a miserable book, but I didn’t enjoy it and found it quite forgettable. I never felt empathy or caring for Jo, as she wasn’t a nice, friendly or endearing character. Jo didn’t learn, change it grow from her mistakes. The story moved slowly and never seemed to get anywhere.

I listened to this on audiobook, but also used my print copy to reread sections at time. I felt like the narrator did not enunciate well enough at times for me to understand and follow the story. I would recommend the print or ebook over the audio.