Pirate Patty Reviews

Light a fire they can’t put out…

This story takes place in Scotland. High on a cliff, stands Caldonbrae Hall. Built 150 years ago by Lord William Hope to become a boarding school for girls. He had a lot of them. With names like Temperance, Charity, and on and on.

The goal of the school is to turn out girls who are educated and ready to fulfill their role in society.

When Rose, a young Classics teacher is hired to work there she is shocked by the invitation and honored, as she is the first new hire in about 10 years.

At this point you want to ask yourself why. And it will become abundantly clear.

The girls are not at all interested in learning anything and there is quite a mystery over Rose’s predecessor. She may or may not have had an inappropriate relationship to a student or she may have just moved, no one will say and the girls aren’t even looking at her.

Rose should have listened to her own instincts and never come to Scotland, but now she’s in and it is made clear that she is going nowhere. With overt threats about her mother and the town people hating all of them, she is truly alone.

At first I thought maybe this was a ghost school. Where everyone is dead except Rose. The girls were rude and cruel to her and each other. When they finally tell her why they are all there, she is horrified and sets out to right the situation.

I have to say I did not care for Rose at all. She was rather slow in the beginning and I thought about skipping to the end as it just plodded along.

This may be a great Netflix, Handmaid’s Tale type of thing but the book itself bored me to death. This isn’t feminism at all. More like sex trafficking.

NetGalley/ May 18, 2021 St. Martin’s Press