Fun Books About Boarding School
Eloise’s Recommendations:
All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth
Charlie Calloway was born into a glamorous and wealthy family, but when her mother disappeared when she was seven, it left a shroud of mystery around her seemingly perfect life. Now seventeen and attending Knollwood, a prestigious New England boarding school, Charlie is quickly adopted into the in crowd and is invited to become part of mysterious and elite secret society. Does she have what it takes to make it through the initiation process? Does she even want to? It will challenge her to dig up secrets new and old and figure out who can be trusted and where the real dangers lie-nothing in her life will ever be the same.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl
This is one of all my all time favorite novels-it’s written in a very cool format that’s difficult to explain, but you should definitely check it out. When Blue van Meer arrives at the St. Gallaway School, to quietly finish her last year of high school and claim her Valedictorian status while her professor father teaches at a nearby university, she and her father are an inseparable unit, traversing the country together since her mother’s death. Almost immediately, her plans for academic solitude go awry when she’s drawn into a group of popular students and their mysterious film teacher, Hannah. There’s a murder, several mysteries, romance and much more that Blue struggles to untangle, all while maintaining her perfect GPA. Blue’s deadpan sense of humor and the interesting structure of the book which incorporate drawings and outside references, make it one of my favorites that I can read again and again.
The Expectations by Alexander Tilney
Ben is excited to start as a freshman at St. James-an elite New England boarding school with a reputation for instilling a sense of honor and fortitude in its students, like Ben’s popular older brother and his father and uncle. He’s just won the national championship for squash, made friends and met a cute girl, but he quickly finds out that nothing is as he expected, especially with his roommate, the fabulously wealth son of Sheik who can’t seem to grasp the social norms of the school. This captures all the awkwardness of being a teenager and figuring out where you fit in.
Dinah’s Recommendations:
Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter
As you might guess from the title of the first book “I’d Tell You I Love You But Then I’d Have to Kill You,” the main character in this series, Cammie, is at a boarding school for exceptional young women where they are training to be spies. In between her spy skill classes, she falls in love with a regular boy from the town nearby and has to figure out how to navigate a “normal” identity with her espionage commitments. A big mystery begins to unfold and Cammie and her friends in the dorm have to use all their skills to solve it. These books are definitely written for the younger end of the YA audience, but they are a fun and easy read!
Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson
This book is set at another “exceptional” school, Ellingham Academy in Vermont, founded by an eccentric tycoon for creative thinkers and artists. The school is mired in mystery as shortly after it opened, the founder’s wife and daughter were kidnapped, with the culprit only leaving behind a riddle signed “Truly, Devious.” Stevie Bell is the main character, a true crime aficionado accepted tot he school with the goal of solving the mystery decades later. With a group of quirky and often suspicious dorm mates, everything goes crazy when a new murder takes place. This series had a fun cast of characters, each defined by the unique interest that brought them to Ellingham, and the boarding school backdrop is ideal for the fun and twisty mystery that takes place mostly on the grounds.
Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison
I have a soft spot for this book because the Goode School reminds me of a hybrid of the all-girls boarding school our mom and aunts went to and several Southern colleges I had friends attend. This is by far the most realistic school out of the three books I’m recommending and it’s the most adult of the three, but also a very fun and twisty murder mystery. The main character, a wealthy British piano prodigy, is clearly not who she seems to be from the beginning and everyone is hiding some kind of secret. It takes highly entertaining twists and turns including affairs, secret societies, hazing and quite a few shockers that I did not see coming.