Boarding School Book Number 2

Okay, I could think of Killing November by Adriana Mather as a boarding school book, so I can group it with the other boarding school book I read recently. Or I could think of it as...

Harry Potter But With With Knives And Swords

A young person goes off to a private school she's never heard of and no one can find. While there, she learns about family feuds and begins to suspect that her own family may be involved in some of this conflict.

Get it?

Except with murderers and stuff like that. And, blessedly, no fantasy. We're talking real world murderers.

Evidently Boarding School Is Really Awful

Killing November plays on the boarding school as misery and mean kid cliches because Academy Absconditi is miserable and these kids are mean. I'm talking assassin mean.

Assasination is the kind of thing they teach at this place. The teenagers there are all from families that for centuries have been the power behind thrones and often responsible for some of history's sudden turns. Especially if they were nasty turns.

November doesn't know any of this when she arrives on-site after her father suddenly sends her there to keep her safe while he deals with some unspecified dangers.

This place is Dad's idea of a safe house?

A Late Night Read

Now, personally, I took issue with the lack of electricity, Internet access, and cable at this place. (Another Potterish aspect, don't you think?) Nonetheless, I stayed up until one a.m. a couple of times reading this. (No, I don't read as rapidly as I used to.) And I'll look for the follow-up book.

Something that intrigues me--These kids, as November notes, are getting no education at all except for how to murder. How will they get into college? November's roommate explains that they don't need to go to college, they are criminal types with the means to just say they went. Well, okay. But won't they at some point need some basic knowledge of geography? Economics or civics? How to use laptops, which they have no experience with in this secondary school?

You hear a lot of talk in life about the difference between school and the real world. I would really, really like to see these kids try to function in the real world. Being a skilled murderer may not take you that far in life.

Maybe in a future book.