📜✒️When We Were Monsters 🖋️📜

• Jennifer Niven

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Show of hands who else had their adolescence hearts broken by Jennifer Niven circa 2015? 🙋‍♀️ When I saw Jennifer Niven had a new book coming much, I was intrigued. I was even more intrigued when I saw it was a dark academia YA thriller (aka, the best genre in the world).

At an elite academy, every year eight of the best and brightest students are selected for Jan Term, a special programme taught by an illustrious alum. This years mentor is author and actress Meredith Graffam, famous for her novels about the scandal and murder she was caught up in during her years at the boarding school. We are immersed in the dual POVs of Effy, coming to terms with her father’s fatal betrayal of her mother, and Arlo, reckoning with the death of his best friend the summer before. Under Graffam’s unconventional tutelage, the students are forced to reckon with their dark pasts and undertake risky tasks that will result in tragedy.

Meredith Graffam herself was definitely my favourite character and I would have loved to see more of her glamorous and scandalous past – Evelyn Hugo-style – in flashbacks or an additional POV.

Any story that revolves around writers is an automatic count-me-in. It worked so well in this book and paired perfectly with the dark academia. The girls with their preppy skirts and tights, the candles, the writing by hand, the slightly eccentric, unhinged mentor! Also, completely out of context for anyone who hasn’t read the book yet – the Scrabble squares! I loved that small detail so much – so eerie and creepy! (No spoilers, you’ll just have to read and find out).

If you enjoy dark academia boarding school settings, with intrigue and mystery and murder, I’d highly recommend this. It has the same eerie vibes, along with an isolated, coastal setting, as some of my favourite classics do, like Rebecca, If We Were Villains or The Secret History.