Months ago at Tiffin Academy boarding school, student Cinnamon Peters committed suicide. It’s now the beginning of another school year and Head of School Audre Robinson is trying to make it the best ever. Somehow Tiffin bumped up in ranking to #2 boarding school in the country. But no one really understands how that happened, even going so far as to thinking the people in charge of ranking were paid off.

Charley Hicks is a new student and late admission as a “5th form” or a junior. She’s different than all the other kids there and doesn’t care to fit in. Dub Austin is a quarterback who was dating Cinnamon Peters at the time of her death. Andrew Eastman or “East” is the quintessential bad boy. He constantly breaks the rules but because his father is a big donor and school board president, he never gets kicked out. Davi Banerjee is an influencer whose parents own a fashion label.

In extremely predictable fashion, East finds an interest in new girl Charley (duh). He enlists her to help him create an underground speakeasy for the students. This is probably the most exciting thing to happen in the book. Also completely unrealistic.

Hours before Cinnamon died, she sent boyfriend Dub an email but tells him not to open it until their graduation day. I don’t know if I would have the willpower to wait like him. Well don’t get your hopes up because we still don’t know what was in the email. Maybe in the second book? But to be honest, I don’t know if I’ll even want to read it. Throw in two seasoned teachers who are secretly seeing each other, another two teachers who are new and trying to find their way, an eating disorder, an app called ZipZap, and anything else Young Adult you can think of.

I went into the book pretty excited knowing it was Elin Hilderbrand and her daughter. I also loved reading/ watching Gossip Girl and seeing Nevermore in Netflix’s Wednesday. So I do enjoy reading about boarding schools. But this was not it. Super cliche. I also hated the terms “5th form, 6th form” because it was confusing.

2/5

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