Now I'm in charge, the gates are my gates. The rules are my rules.
It’s an incendiary moment for St Oswald’s school. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls. Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely forty, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old ground, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered. But Rebecca is here to make her mark. She’ll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before…
After all… You can’t keep a good woman down.
This was a compelling twisty psychological thriller full of gas-lighting, long buried secrets and cold blooded revenge!! The less you know going in, the better, but it does examine the power of repressed childhood fears can hold over you in adulthood, and of how your own memories cannot always be trusted. It has a slow start but definitely worth the wait because once it gets going (within 100 pages), woah you won’t want to stop. It was something different for me to read, so I didn’t see any of it coming but it would be interesting to hear from people who normally read these types of books. It is a standalone but exists in the same world/school as Joanne’s previous books Gentlemen & Players, and Different Class - I haven’t read them so it’s not necessary to understand what’s happening, but I will add them to my list after enjoying this one so much.
— Brea