Book Review- Emily Layden's All Girls

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with a copy of Emily Layden’s novel, All Girls, in exchange for an honest review.

When a scandal from 1995 surfaces and threatens to damage the reputation of Atwater, a prestigious all-girls boarding school in Connecticut, the current students are left wondering who they should trust. All Girls is set during a single school year and each chapter focuses on a different student, high school girls with different dreams and personalities, all trying to navigate the complications of adolescence.

As the girls are being dropped off at Atwater in the fall, they encounter a series of yard signs alerting them to a rapist living on campus. In 1995, a student named Karen Mirro was raped by a teacher and subsequently expelled from Atwater based on an unrelated incident, with no repercussions for the rapist. Now in her late thirties, Mirro has brought a lawsuit against Atwater, and although none of the students firmly know which of their teachers is a rapist, the rumors run rampant and distrust is high.

The school year proceeds with its usual traditions and events, as the administration struggles to keep the lawsuit on the down-low, including none of the staff being removed from their positions. The student paper tries to publish an edition regarding sexual assault and they are barred. Just as the signs mysteriously appear, so do other reminders of the case, such as flyers and unusual artwork. Atwater is awash in the mysterious identity of both the rapist and the person calling attention to Mirro’s case. But even more, the girls all worry if their beloved school, which is steeped in their identity, would protect them if they were in Mirro’s shoes?

I was initially drawn to All Girls because the blurb likened it to one of my all-time favorite novels, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. I can see the reasons for the comparisons, but All Girls was especially timely due to recent revelations about my high school years.

I graduated from a prestigious arts high school in 1995 and during my time in school, I did not realize boundaries that were being crossed between teachers and students. Sure, I saw things that seemed borderline inappropriate, but like Layden’s characters, when you are a teen, sometimes the lines are very blurry. Since graduating, I have heard stories from close friends of very, very inappropriate behavior towards them from some of our male teachers. More than one story, more than one teacher, and certainly more than one female student being affected. It hurts to realize this was happening and that friends were hurting in silence.

All Girls highlights an issue that has been raised recently among my friends, that there has been a shift in the current generation. Mirro was of my generation, which now I realize, we didn’t feel that we had the ability to speak up. She files the lawsuit decades later, because now, during the “me too” movement, she feels like she has a voice. The current Atwater students may still have some uncertainties regarding boundaries and inappropriate behavior, yet they are also raised during a time when they know the power of their own voices. They know that it is vital to hold Atwater accountable for protecting its students.

Layden’s novel took me right back to my teen years, not that I attended a boarding school or grewup with social media, yet the teen emotions were similar. I enjoyed how she framed the novel with focusing on a different student for each chapter and how the book took us through a single school year. I liked having different voices tell their experiences of Atwater and Mirro.

I’m in my early 40’s, and I feel that hindsight gives me a different perspective then if I had read All Girls during my teen years. I have a stepdaughter who will soon turn fourteen, and I couldn’t help but see her in a few of the younger characters, particularly cringing with some of the cruelties that the girls inflict upon each other, hoping that she will make true friends and that her “bad decisions” are mild.

All Girls is poignant and beautifully written. I highly recommend it and I look forward to reading Layden’s future works.

Book Review- Lucinda Riley's The Royal Secret

Thank you to Atria Books for providing me with a copy of Lucinda Riley’s novel, The Royal Secret, in exchange for an honest review.

Reporter Joanna Haslam is tired of being assigned puff-pieces, but her life changes when she is assigned to cover the funeral of veteran actor, Sir James Harrison. At the funeral, she meets a mysterious elderly woman, that sends Joanna on the path to uncovering a decades old scandal involving England’s royal family. As Joanna rushes to solve the mystery, she realizes that there are people willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden.

Riley’s The Royal Secret was actually written twenty years ago ( although she has made updates to this current version) and it was deemed so scandalous, that many booksellers in the UK would not carry it or promote it. This was the info that I received that enticed me to sign up for an Ark of The Royal Secret. It set my expectations high and I have to admit that The Royal Secret did not meet those expectations. I’m not quite sure why it was so shocking or scandalous. I am in my early forties, so I can easily remember back a few decades and it’s hard to imagine that anything in this story would have been reason for refusing to sell the book. That said, I live in the United States, not England, so I am viewing the story through a different cultural lens. Also, Riley’s book was originally published shortly after the death of Lady Diana, so perhaps that may have created a sensitivity regarding anything written about the royal family, fictional or otherwise. Riley’s royal family is completely fictional and she does not use the names of any actual monarchs. If there is any similarities between actual monarchs and her characters, I did not notice.

The Royal Secret is suspenseful from start to finish. It is filled with twists and turns, many of which I could not have anticipated. If anything, it was a bit much with all of the plot twists, especially in the last quarter of the story. The pacing really ramps up to a frenzy and I was overwhelmed with the speed of the information.

The characters are the best part of the story. I especially liked the romantic tension between Zoe Harrison, the granddaughter of Sir James Harrison, and her bodyguard, Simon. Zoe is in a relationship and Simon needs to maintain professionalism, yet there is a beautiful undercurrent of longing and passion between these two characters.

There is a second and equal love story thread between Joanna and Zoe’s brother, Marcus. This romance lacked the sweetness and passion of Zoe and Simon. I felt like Joanna and Marcus were a fling that carried on past its expiration date, yet as Joanna is our heroine, we readers should be engaged in her romantic plot line. I liked Joanna as a plucky reporter, however my primary emotional connection was with Zoe and Simon.

The story had too many coincidences to make it gel. For example, Joanna happens to be best friends with Simon, who happens to be placed on a top-secret assignment guarding Zoe. Through her investigation, Zoe develops a relationship with Marcus and is then introduced to Joanna, which is how she discovers that Simon is an agent; a big secret that she never knew about her best friend. Joanna and Marcus get intwined in this mystery in totally different ways, a mystery that would never have come to light if Joanna hadn’t happened to be sitting next to the elderly woman at the funeral. To push this further, this elderly woman, knowing that she is ill, decides to tell Joanna her biggest secret, but in a way that is still shrouded in mystery, putting Joanna in both professional and mortal jeopardy. Without giving away any major plot twists, The Royal Secret, is full of these chance encounters and people who happened to be in the right place, at the right time. (or the wrong place, at the wrong time) For a story that is built on imminent danger, several aspects of the story happened too conveniently.

I enjoyed the primary setting in the 1990’s and appreciated how the technology of the era was worked into the story. It would have played out very differently, if it had been set now. I also liked the way the story spanned several decades, playing with societal norms of different eras. Riley does a wonderful job of setting the scene and writing atmospheric descriptions.

Overall, The Royal Secret was not my cup of tea and I would not recommend it. This was my first time reading Riley and I would be inclined to seek out her other novels. I enjoyed her writing, but not the general plot of this particular story.