Sunday, November 24, 2019

2019 book 149

Scarlett Thomas' Oligarchy
After writing the first three books in an excellent middle-grade series, Thomas is back to adult fiction with her latest. Though it does revolve around teen girls at a boarding school in England. Protagonist Natasha, daughter of a very rich Russian man, is sent to a weird school where the girls are all preoccupied by eating disorders and little learning seems to actually happen. I will say that I liked the disparate strands of this story a lot—the relationships between the girls, the relationship between Natasha and her aunt, the sort of mystery element that comes into play—but I felt like I wanted more meat to build the story out. Still, it has a sort of raw urgency that I appreciated; I read it all in one go. A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in January.

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