Booklist Reviews 2019 February #2

When November wakes up at the Academy Absconditi, she knows her life has taken a turn for the bizarre. Unlike her more-or-less normal life, the academy is a world unto itself, in which students view each other with extreme distrust and take classes in things like deception, poisons, and weaponry. Everyone at school has ties to the Strategia, an underground world of rival families and elite spies that November has always thought of as a fairy tale, and they all seem to know more about November's past than she does. But when a student turns up dead, and November finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation, she'll have to learn fast how to survive and fight back in this world. Despite a few underdeveloped threads and characters, Mather (How to Hang a Witch?, 2016) has built a dark, intriguing universe. Between the boarding-school setting, the lessons in espionage, and the murder mystery, there's plenty to grab readers, and with the door open for sequels, they're bound to stay on the hook. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.