Four troubled friends, One murdered girl... and a dark fate that may leave them all doomed.
After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled it a suicide, but the trio are determined to find out what really happened.
When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events they couldn’t have imagined. As the girls retrace their friend’s last steps, they uncover dark secrets about themselves and their destinies, discovering they’re all cursed to repeat the brutal and gruesome endings to their stories until they can break the cycle.
This contemporary take on classic fairytales reimagines heroines as friends attending the same school. While investigating the murder of their best friend, they uncover connections to their ancient fairytale curses and attempt to forge their own fate before it's too late.
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Gr 9 Up-Despite its perfect appearance, the Grimrose Académie, an elite boarding school located in a castle in the Swiss Alps, has a dark history of students dying under mysterious circumstances, most recently Ariane, whose drowning seemed to be an accident or a suicide. Yet her closest friends, Ella, Yuki, and Rory, can't shake feelings of suspicion about the nature of her death. When Nani, a recent transfer student, discovers a book of fairy tales among Ariane's possessions with a list of names that includes those of past dead students and their own, the friends begin to uncover the magical and macabre links between fairy tale stories and their own fates. The fun of Pohl's murder mystery lies in uncovering the connections between the characters and their fairy tale antecedents, as tensions rise and the killer, or curse, seems to circle closer and closer to the friends. Chapters alternate perspectives between the four girls, allowing their unique stories to develop. This series opener tackles complex issues, including domestic violence, obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety, chronic illness, and more, through an immersive world that dances between fairy tale and reality. Ella and Rory are white; Yuki is cued Japanese and Nani Native Hawaiian. The book includes bisexual, lesbian, asexual, and transgender representation. VERDICT A solid choice for libraries where dark fairy tale retellings circulate well.-Molly Saunders, Manatee County P.L., Bradenton, FL