Sadly this book just didn’t grab as much as I hoped it would. I put it down and picked it up multiple times but I just couldn’t connect with it. Super bummed.

This is obviously different from her BDB books but it just wasn’t for me.

The chips seem stacked against Sarah Taylor as she starts a new school year at a new boarding school - she is still coming to terms with her bipolar diagnosis, is transferring as a sophomore, stands out as a scholarship student, and manages to unwittingly incur the hatred of reigning queen bee, Greta Stanhope. When petty pranks turn to a school-wide scandal, and someone ends up dead, Sarah starts questioning what she has witnessed and what has her mental illness projected for her. This psychological, coming of age thriller is written solely from Sarah’s point of view and the narrative succeeds in letting the reader inhabit the insecurities of both an adolescent female, but also a newly diagnosed mental patient.

My main question is why was this sold as adult when every character is fifteen? I mean, I get there's cussing and murder and scandal, but uhhh, I've read a lot worse in actual YA books. It's just weird to me. Otherwise, it was a good book.

I really liked how descriptive this book was about life in a boarding school. The world and the characters were so well described I could be there and see and feel with them.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book. However, I really enjoyed the story. Set at a private boarding school for girls, this book is a slow-burn suspense. The story follows Sarah, a new students with bipolar disorder, navigate her way through this new world. The book handles mental illness in a responsible and informative way. It is part of who Sarah is, but does not totally define her. It was a bit of a slow start for me, but once the book got moving I was hooked. For people that enjoy a book set in academia or like a slow burn suspense I highly recommend!

This is a very slow burn thriller with a very unreliable narrator. Some parts worked for me, and some didn’t. I enjoyed having a narrator who was less than reliable, but it was very hard to be inside the mind of someone suffering from bipolar disorder. This also brings a flurry of trigger warnings with it.

I wasn’t completely sold with how everything wrapped up, but ultimately I would recommend this if you’re a fan of high school/boarding school setting with the unreliable narrator trope and are okay with a slower story. But please do look into triggers.

3.5 stars

This book was just not for me. It is a slow burn, dark academia thriller(ish), but honestly I was a bit bored.

Sarah doesn't fit in at St. Ambrose. And to make matters worse, her mom tries to help her make friends when they move in. It's a nice idea, but likely has left a big target on Sarah's back. Because there are mean girls at St. Ambrose. And these are girls that make Regina George look tame!

The St. Ambrose School for Girls is a fantastic read, and a quick page-turner that brings back all those dorm life insecurities. I really don't want to say much and give too much away, but this one is well worth the read.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Gallery books for this twisty story that makes us all happy to have left high school in the past. It's available now.

This book was alright.
The marketing for this book was better than the book itself.
The cover is gorgeous and the synopsis and ads were amazing.
But the book just didn't do it for me.

thank you Netgalley and Gallery books for the opportunity

I was so excited to discover a new book by Jessica Ward as I totally devoured "The Bourbon King" series. But this YA book didn't work for me. It was uninteresting and a chore to read. Hope she writes more like TBK in the future. My thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of this book for review. All opinions are my own.

As compelling as this novel was, I am having the hardest time deciding how I felt about it to review it!

It is most certainly a dramatic story, filled with the most interesting descriptions I've read in a while. I found Ward's writing to be very fascinating in that regard; the way Sarah relays her thoughts and experiences is not just blunt but fantastical and incredibly detailed. Since Ward herself notes that she is not bipolar, and I, too, am not bipolar, I cannot confer whether the depiction of Sarah's bipolarity is accurate, though I have noticed similar behavior from loved ones who do have the diagnosis and Ward assures that she did her homework and had sensitivity testing for accuracy. It is one of the main antagonists of the story, constantly getting in Sarah's way of wanting to live and affecting every aspect of her relationships with other people.

On that note, I must also mention, as it would be utterly irresponsible of me not to, that there are explicit details about Sarah's attempted suicides. She falls into her depressive episodes so very deeply and with such gut-wrenching detail that I have to give a warning to anyone who may be vulnerable to episodes of their own to maybe not read this book. Things are especially despairing when she stops taking her lithium (side note: this story is 100% a PSA about making sure you take your meds!). I will say that it also gives explicit details about how Sarah gets OUT of her depressive episodes, so therefore it could also be seen as an inspirational story for those very same people. Either way, be very mindful about being triggered when deciding to read this book. Other triggers aside from the obvious bullying and ableism include statutory rape (Sarah's residential advisor having sex with the underage students is a main plot point) and violent homophobia (don't worry, there is no Bury Your Gays trope in this story).

While the description uses Heathers and The Secret Society as similar stories, I kept thinking of the live-action Wednesday Addams series as I was reading. They are very similar. If you've got someone super into any of these titles, this is definitely going to be a book they'll devour. It might also give them a completely different perspective on mental illness as well. Some things are clunky and some messages are unclear but I think it was a decent read regardless.

Whose brilliant idea was it to compare this to Heathers meets The Secret History? Just no. Both of those are peak of their genre/media and this is at a disadvantage trying to keep up. This is a mean girls with a touch of thriller late in the book. This is not what it is claiming to be so therefore the wrong audience is reviewing it. It maybe a terrific read for someone else's taste, but it is always difficult to have a story pitched with all the buzz words that make a reader excited about a book and then it doesn't deliver.
Not for me.
#TheStAmbroseSchoolforGirls #Netgalley #GalleryBooks

I enjoyed this book! I actually really liked the panic attack/anxiety aspect of it, as it added so much mystery and intrigue to the central story. It was a really cool spin on what could have been a run of the mill teenage girl boarding school murder story.

"Heathers" meets "The Secret History"? Hardly. So slow and I'm so tired of the drunk/drugged unreliable female narrator trope. The best thing about this book is the cover.

Thank you to Gallery Books and NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I think that this was a slow burner for me. At the start I was not sold on the narrative and the story -- it wasn't anything more than a mean girl and a sick girl and a lot of unfair stuff. But then it picked up about halfway through once we got the additional plot details, more characters, and more drama. And of course, murder.

So, in the end I was pretty invested and liked to see how it went. But it did get pretty dark!

3 stars.

Will be thinking about this book for a long time! Captivating. I loved the unreliable narrator. I was rooting for the main character the entire book!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of The St, Ambrose School for Girls by Jessica Ward!

Okay. So once again, we have a book that is just… marketed wrong?? This sounded so intriguing and also compared to Heathers (one of my all time favorite films!) but, unfortunately that’s not what I found in these pages.

This has been marketed as a mystery/thriller but this is actually, first and foremost, a coming of age story. And those are not my jam AT ALL. So had I know that, I wouldn’t have picked this up.

This does have a mystery/thriller ~aspect to it. But it’s the slowest of slow burns and all of that is the last, eh, 70 pages? If that? Which is… not what I look for in a mystery/thriller?

I also wish this had been more about the school. Maybe it had a creepy, storied past? But no. This was literally just mean girls being horrible to each other for 300 pages and some change. (And not even in the enjoyable, comedic Mean Girls way.)

So. Again. I think this was marketed wrong? Because this was compared to a bunch of things that I like but was nothing like those things. And because of that, I, the wrong audience entirely, picked this up and did not enjoy it. But if it had been marketed ~correctly, it could’ve found the right audience.

But anyway. The one thing I did like about this is that it did mental health rep SO WELL. I don’t know ~a ton about BPD but I feel like I learned a lot from this. This book handled all of that so well and that’s what I connected with most in this story.

Aside from that though, this just was not for me, unfortunately. Though if you enjoy coming of age stories, you should definitely pick this up!

And thank you to Book Club Favorites, Gallery Books & NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review!

I'm a lover of JR Ward's paranormal books and I enjoy seeing her stepping into additional genres like she has as Jessica Ward with this book.

The story is harsh, the characters vary from just shy of likable to loathe worthy.. And yet, Ward has created a really good read. Mostly I think, due to her extensive research and incredible descriptions of Sarah's mental health issues. Wow! I really felt like I was getting direct insight into Sarah's struggles. Poor Sarah to be so afflicted so young. She's hyper-intelligent yet saddled with such horrible effects of her bi=polar disease. This book is intense. The suspense is so well paced that it keeps you wondering from the first chapter to the end about what happens at St. Ambroses and who did it.

I have to give this book five stars for the research, the incredibly well-written characters, especially Sarah, and the suspense even though I kind of didn't like it. What does "kind of didn't like it" mean? There was no one I was into, the story is not uplifting with few happy points, and it could be hard to read. Kudos to Ms. Ward for still keeping me turning those pages!

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC.

Sarah Taylor gets into a private school her mom submitted her to. It was to help her have a better life. But Sarah doesn't see that at first. She has had issues in the past and still suffers from being bipolar and she doesn't fit into this school. When the queen bee decides to target her to try to break her from bleaching her clothes to making copies of her letter her mother sent where she wrote about her past. She's trying not to let her break her

But when she decides enough is enough the bull turns out to have been murdered.

Sarah's mind messes with her and she doesn't know what happen. Did she have something to do with it? she can't trust her memories and so she makes it her mission to find out what happen even if it turns out it was her that did something.

This had its good and bad moments. There were parts I couldn't believe but I wanted to know what happen and who was behind the murder.



Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy in exchange for my honest review.