This story starts with what should be a perfect graduation weekend at Princeton University. Except the new graduate, Naomi, isn't at any events and is instead floating, dead, in a nearby river. Her sister, Maya, is devastated and is torn between her grief for her sister, and her flashbacks to her own time at Princeton many years before. 

This story is dual told from dual POVs, and also a dual timeline. From my perspective, this made the story hard to follow. You're seeing Naomi, in the months before her death, and Maya in the present day, as well as Maya in her own days at Princeton and the Sterling Club. The characters are sisters and their voices were similar and this added to the convoluted feeling of this story. I feel the author would have been more successful in this if Maya had been reading an old journal vs flashing to another timeline altogether. 

Race and past traumatic experiences also come up in this story. Both Maya and Naomi are half-Black and half-Asian. I didn't mind hearing about Maya's past, trying hard to assimilate into the culture at Princeton. But I was struggling to believe Maya wouldn't share some of this with her sister when she decided to go to Princeton. An overall theme is whether Maya's silence gets her sister killed, and that seems major enough to have talked about. 

If you enjoy stories that feature dark academia, a slow burn, and family history, you'll enjoy this debut from Lauren Ling Brown.