The Swallows by bestselling thriller wrier Lisa Lutz is set in a boarding school on America's wealthy east coast. It's isolated and surrounded by woods and for new teacher Alex Witt that's Stonebridge Academy's most attractive quality. Hired to teach English, Alex discovers she's been given the task of teaching creative writing to a group of seniors. Alex is frustrated at the bait and switch the principal pulled; she is the daughter and occasional ghostwriter/editor for her father a celebrated thriller writer but she had not wanted to teach writing. So without a lesson plan she sets her students a questionaire to stimulate writing ideas; asking what do you love? what do you hate? who are you really? etc. but as she looks through their answers Alex begins to suspect some disturbing behaviour among the students. She sets out to discover what the secrets of "The Darkroom" are and why so many of the girls seem to fear and loathe it and so many of the boys love it. Aided by the smart and secretive student Gemma Russo and alternately helped and hindered by the rest of the faculty a bitter and ultimately deadly battle of the sexes is revealed in this tense, dark and page turning thriller. Told through multiple narratives the truth is gradually revealed and the tension mounts. A must read for fans of Megan Abbott.
Thanks so much to Sarah at Titan Books for my copy. The Swallows is out in paperback now.
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