The novel begins as Sade starts private boarding school in England. Early on, we understand there are things about her past that Sade is hiding. She is haunted by the ghost of a dead girl in her past, her mother committed suicide when she was 10, and her father was strict, keeping her locked up and homeschooled. The only reason she is at school now is because he died so she is making her own decisions.
After meeting her roommate Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s friend Baz, Sade feels hopeful about the school but Elizabeth clearly is troubled by something and disappears after the first night. The school writes off her disappearance (Elizabeth is a scholarship student of Asian descent rather than a child of the rich elite like many of her classmates) but Baz and Sade join forces to investigate because clearly something odd is going on.
Sade also manages to get invited to join the Unholy Trinity for lunch (think the Plastics is Mean Girls), and discovers more about the power dynamics of the school, the players and the swim team’s status as untouchable in the school. It all seems fine but it doesn’t take long for the seedy underbelly to reveal itself.
I quite enjoyed Ace of Spades, the author’s debut novel. That one was more of a fast spaced thriller while this is a more slow paced, traditional mystery. While Àbíké-Íyímídé explores the dynamics of race, gender, class, power and wealth in both of her novels, I feel like this put it a bit more of the focus on wealth/class and gender while race was more at the fore front in Ace of Spades – it’s absolutely still a factor here, of course and you can’t exactly view them in isolation but there was a lot more about the institutions protecting boys and men at the expense of girls here, especially if the boys are rich, powerful and white.
