StAmbroseWhen Sarah Taylor arrives at the exclusive St Ambrose School, she's hyper-aware of how different she is from her wealthier classmates. Her attempts to escape her social climber mom and carve a new identity as goth girl Bo are foiled when her mom meets mean girl queen bee Greta on the first day. Fortunately, Sarah finds a friend in her roommate Strots, an athlete too cool to care about what Greta thinks and too rich to ever get into trouble herself.

This social hierarchy boarding school story is given additional layers by Sarah's mental health condition: she's bipolar, and desperate to keep her bottle of lithium pills and history of attempted suicide from her new schoolmates. Things escalate when Greta chooses Sarah as a target of her bullying, and Sarah in turn discovers something that Greta herself wants to keep secret.

The St Ambrose School for Girls isn't quite psychological thriller so much as psychological drama. Ward draws us into Sarah's mind, the rapid swings between optimism and depression, and the bigger picture downward spiral as her attempts to create a good life at St Ambrose are constantly foiled by Greta's bullying and her own mental health situation.

The story is solid, and Ward's depiction of all the ways girls can inflict cruelties on each other is vivid and raw. There's a subplot about Strots' own history with Greta that makes a spot-on, if not at all surprising, observation about the priorities of an institution like St Ambrose, and how these play out in terms of their standards of acceptable behaviour. The fallout of Greta's secret led to its logical, albeit tragic, conclusion, and the mystery it created had enough twistiness that the big reveal wasn't immediately apparent.

Overall, this was pretty good. The pacing was a bit slow, and the tone a bit more somber than I anticipated. (I was hoping for a fun and twisty thriller melodrama.) The story was solid but not especially memorable. Despite the deeper-than-usual dive into a bipolar main character, nothing about the plot especially stood out to me or truly got its hooks in. (I'll defer to readers with lived experiences of bipolar disorder to advise on how true-to-life the depiction is.) So it didn't quite keep me flipping the pages as eagerly as I otherwise may have. Still, the writing was good, and the pacing strong enough to keep me reading till the end.

+

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sarah Taylor is 15 years old, struggling with rather severe mental health issues and about to start life at a new boarding school. Unfortunately, soon after she arrives she becomes the target of the school bully and things escalate from there.
I had times where I wasn't quite sure who the intended audience for this was. It read like YA in a lot of parts but the subject matter seemed to be for a more mature audience.
That said, I did enjoy the story and found the pacing pretty good.
Please find attached my spoiler free youtube review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s6ZdtKiFp4

Sarah enters St. Ambrose on a scholarship, feeling out of place and like she doesn’t belong,hoping to be a part of something. Sometimes.
She meets Greta Stanhope, the resident “mean girl,” who places a target square on Sarah’s back. And the malice begins.

We begin to get glimpses of Sarah’s mental health struggles and compulsions. She struggles with making friends, she has hallucinations and feelings of immense sadness. After a few incidents Sarah becomes overwhelmed by it all and thinks about taking her life. Thankfully she has her roommate in her corner and she realizes she has one true friend.

But then there is chaos.

This was an easy read, that I could visualize and connect to the teenage angst. I think the author did a thorough job of describing the emotions and complex nature around Sarah’s illness. She is a strong character, determined not to let Greta break her. Especially once she becomes entangled in the scandals at St. Ambrose.

Thank you Simon & Schuster Canada for the ARC!

This book was not what I expected! Having read previous books from JR Ward I wasn't sure what would come from her Jessica Ward pen name.

This is definitely more of a literary thriller. The main character, Sarah Taylor struggles to fit in at her prestigious boarding school, feeling like an outcast compared to her well-off peers. While it took a bit to get going, I found myself caught up in Sarah's story and wanting to see what would become of her and her nemesis - the ending was twisted and not what I saw coming. The book is set in the 1990s so some of the language and situations definitely fit that time frame.

Trigger warnings abound for this one so please check before reading.

This novel was by no means bad, but I did find it quite slow, at times needlessly triggering, and I found the mental health representation to be less than desirable. I also had very mixed feelings about the ending, though I will admit I was surprised by the twist it took. Jessica Ward is a promising author who, to her own admission in the author's notes, did her best with the mental health representation in this book, unfortunately, it did make the book less appealing to me.

Thank you to Net Galley for this ARC. This book was a bit slower than I was hoping. It was ok. There was a lot of internal monologuing which sometimes felt unnecessary. It was an interesting take on mental illness...whether its a true and accurate take is another story.

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster Canada, and Gallery Books for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
The St. Ambrose School for Girls releases July 11, 2023

2.5

Sarah, our 15 year old fmc, is the newest student at St. Ambrose — a boarding school for girls — and is attending on the merits of an essay that she wrote the previous summer, submitted by her mother.
With a wardrobe decked in all black, and known as an outlier, Sarah has a difficult time adjusting with all of these new changes. It doesn’t take long at all for her to be on the receiving end of Greta’s (the popular girl) taunts and cruel, sabotaging pranks.

I’m sure there’s an audience for this story, but I personally found it to be quite wordy, and hoped for it to be more thrilling. Things don’t really pick up until the last 20-30% and I got really tired of reading “Hot RA” (a grand 68 times).

I think this would have been stronger if the characters were aged up a bit from 15 to 17.
I also wasn’t expecting this story to be set in the year 1991, which I’m not sure what the purpose of that was other than the ease of not having to incorporate modern cellphones and social media and the fact that the school was very against gay people based on “Christian values”.

The author’s note had me a bit confused as well, saying that the main characters bipolar disorder and symptoms couldn’t be a plot device out of respect… but it definitely was?

- bipolar main character
- lesbian side character
- teacher/student relations (side character)
- unreliable narrator

cw: bullying, mental illness, suicide, hanging, suicidal thoughts + attempts, death, murder, manic thoughts

Wow I loved this book! I was completely immersed in Sarah (Sally's) world as she found her way at the St. Ambrose School For Girls.

Sarah was an unlikely candidate for the prestigious school but her star chasing mother submitted an essay of hers without her knowledge. Before she knew it, she was an Ambrose girl. She doesn't fit the part due to her goth look and predilection for black.

But what Sarah really wants to hide is her bi-polar diagnosis and her stints in mental hospitals. She decides to keep to herself and does not speak up when the local queen bee sets her in her sights. What happens next is a bit predictable, but I enjoyed every page.

This isn't a perfect book, but the characters are well drawn and interesting and I loved spending time at the school. If you like thrillers set in academia this is a fabulous book for vou!