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A review by billblume
The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring
4.0
Easily one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read. This book cannot be easily discussed or reviewed without spoiling it.
The book comes out the gate with a gothic setting: the Vaccaro School in the icy wastes at the southern tip of South America. The POV starts with Mavi, a girl posing as an English teacher at the school in 1978.
Then chapter two switches to the other POV of Angel, a teenager from 2020 who observes the same events from 1978 at the school in the fashion of a ghost inhabiting this remote house.
There are some crazy plot twists to this book. When you think you’ve figured out what’s really going on, Faring then yanks the rug out from under you. No, the story is something completely different than it seems. This happens multiple times.
My only major gripe is that I feel as if it’s not believable for Angel not to have given up more information to the reader earlier in the book. That would have given away the biggest twist of all, but again, Angel’s emotional reactions also seem strange given what’s really happening. The wording for Angel’s chapters are very carefully crafted, though. I went back and skimmed the first couple chapters from Angel’s POV to see how well Faring handled this.
A minor complaint I have is Mavi’s voice. She reads much older than her age. It’s not simply an issue regarding Mavi’s voice but the way she thinks of the girls at the school. I feel as if this is not as big a deal though, because of the major twist later in the book.
Faring has created a bizarre story here. She subverts the reader’s expectations throughout the story. Some readers might not like how jarring these shifts in tone are, but I think Faring makes it work.
The book comes out the gate with a gothic setting: the Vaccaro School in the icy wastes at the southern tip of South America. The POV starts with Mavi, a girl posing as an English teacher at the school in 1978.
Then chapter two switches to the other POV of Angel, a teenager from 2020 who observes the same events from 1978 at the school in the fashion of a ghost inhabiting this remote house.
There are some crazy plot twists to this book. When you think you’ve figured out what’s really going on, Faring then yanks the rug out from under you. No, the story is something completely different than it seems. This happens multiple times.
My only major gripe is that I feel as if it’s not believable for Angel not to have given up more information to the reader earlier in the book. That would have given away the biggest twist of all, but again, Angel’s emotional reactions also seem strange given what’s really happening. The wording for Angel’s chapters are very carefully crafted, though. I went back and skimmed the first couple chapters from Angel’s POV to see how well Faring handled this.
A minor complaint I have is Mavi’s voice. She reads much older than her age. It’s not simply an issue regarding Mavi’s voice but the way she thinks of the girls at the school. I feel as if this is not as big a deal though, because of the major twist later in the book.
Faring has created a bizarre story here. She subverts the reader’s expectations throughout the story. Some readers might not like how jarring these shifts in tone are, but I think Faring makes it work.