Thank you NetGalley for this ARC of Ellie Eaton’s The Divines.

The Divines follows narrator Josephine as she reflects on her last year (1973) at a posh boarding school in England, her group of friends and a traumatic final event that has left an indelible mark on her life. The book takes on many themes that resonate true today - privilege, bullying, the need for acceptance, and the lasting psychological impact choices made as teenagers can have as adults.

The course of the book follows Josephine and how, in adulthood, her school experience has become an obsession for her which does lead her to confront her past and attempt to claim responsibility for her actions. I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed the book due to the difficult themes and characters who were not very likable and lacked empathy. However, it was an absorbing, cringe-worthy depiction of teenaged behavior gone wrong. It will stay with you long after you’ve read the final page.

We all learn from our past and hopefully we try to make amends with the parts that aren't so good. That's what this book is about.

The main character, Josephine, seems to have a wonderful life with her handsome husband, Jurgen. Yet, something is dragging her down. She keeps going back to the days when she is in school as a "divine." The other girls were called "townies." Josephine remembers herself as: "lazy, lacking any discernible ambition...unbelievable snobbery, the bitchiness and backstabbing" that was done by the wealthy class of girls while the "townies" were the workers. The book is packed with drama from Josephine's school days focusing on one incident with a highly criticized and tormented roommate.

While reading the first half, I was drifting and bored. But the second half was more interesting when the plot came together. It was the last page that I enjoyed the most - perhaps because the drama was over and all the pieces were finally revealed.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this advanced copy.

This was a bit like a British Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. I liked it well enough, although I’m not sure how Josephine managed to not hear of Gerry’s recovery for 14 years. Ah well.

I struggle through books where none of the characters are likable. This was one of those books for me. I did not care about the characters; therefore, I didn’t care what happened in the meandering storyline.

If there’s any broad genre that I love, it’s boarding school books. This book was another great one. I loved the main character and her honesty. The story was reminiscing her boarding school trauma to her husband, years later. All her insecurities and mistakes were bared. The drama with the other students kept the book exciting. It did get a bit exaggerated for me at time, but give they were teenage girls... maybe realistic as well. The ending and the last few pages were so unexpected and a terrific wow moment.

Very interesting glimpse into girl world, and how it affects not only our teenhood but adulthood life as well. I always find private school stories very interesting, and this did not disappoint.

Disclaimer: I received an e-proof of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the voice of the protagonist, especially in the opening scene, which plunges the reader into a world of teenager girls. As a teenager, Josephine attended a British boarding school, St. John the Divine, where the girls were called “Divines.” The school was closed after an incident occurred. Josephine, now passing through the area on her honeymoon, has a rude encounter with a local woman (“townies” didn’t like the wealthy Divine girls). Her husband begs her to tell the story she had never planned to tell about the Divines. While he tells her she doesn’t have to continue, Josephine can’t stop thinking about her time as a Divine, and the reason the school closed. While I wish the timeline of the present storyline was tighter (it spans several years), I enjoyed what older Josephine added to the Divine story, as the experience affected her deeply.

Ah, the angst and dysfunction of teenage life in the 90's. Eaton brilliantly portrays the feelings and experiences of being a high school girl in that time period, and takes us right back there with Joe - to a time and place in her past that is entirely unsettling. It's a powerful realization how the past, especially those very formative experiences, can be remembered so differently from one person to another. As a teen, the only world is the one in our minds - our thoughts and observations are the truth and we alone determine which events become significant in our hearts and minds. To quote Joe, "Who are we, after all, if not the author of our own story?" This novel provides a lot to think about, although possibly uncomfortably. While I thoroughly enjoyed vicariously (and safely!) living through Joe's repressed, haunting memories and her adult self-reflection, I can see where some readers might simply perceive Joe as an un-relatable and/or unlikable character.

I adored this debut about a young mother struggling with her 90's English boarding-school past. It was an interesting "coming-of-age" novel, and a look at a time gone by. I loved hearing about the school, and the "Divines" and their battle with the "townies" and how it all came crashing down, and how it haunted the protagonist for the decades... really engrossing fiction and I highly recommend! Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

A testament to how cruel people, and especially teenage girls, can be to each other. I wouldn’t say that this book was particularly enjoyable to read, dealing as it does with unpleasant situations and really no sympathetic characters. Sometimes a book like this can be gossipy fun; this was just sad and uncomfortable, with no satisfying conclusion. I do thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing this book for review.

This book is a fast read and has an interesting, compelling question (what happened to Gerry?) driving it. There are a lot of pros and cons to the book, which make it an uneven read. On the bright side, it was nice to see some companionship briefly exist between the narrator and Gerry, when it came time for the morning after pill. It was also pleasing to see our contemporary day finally reach our narrator meeting up with some of her old classmates, and seeing how little they seemed to remember or care about the school was an interesting contrast to our narrator, who seems obsessed.

On a craft level, there are some logistical inconsistencies; we're told bulimia is common, we're told the girls' have their lunch trays checked, we're told our narrator is always eating, we're told they ate only snacks... small inconsistencies, of course, but it stands out over time. The biggest structural issue is that our prologue suggests the narrator only saw Gerry with the other girls when she's lying on the ground, but later we learn that's far from the case. The internalized misogyny from our narrator is real, and at times, feels out of touch and too much. The narrator is hard to have sympathy for, and at times, that works; women, IMO, can be flawed and unlikeable and still great protagonists, but something about this characterization felt hard to connect with emotionally. I also found the treatment of Lauren's sexuality to be disappointing; yet another gay person used as a side character and plot device, all rejection, and then never dealt with again.

Ultimately, this book doesn't feel satisfying. On a literal level, it's hinted that young Gerry was sexually abused by her ice skating coach, but never actually dealt with or answered, which feels like a cheap plot point. The husband feels like a caricature. It also doesn't make sense that, for all of the narrator's searching, she would never realize that Gerry lived; surely, she would have wondered why she never found an obituary, or some sort of paper trail, what with all of the coverage the school and trial supposedly got. Of course, a book needn't answer *all* of these questions, but with so many threads hung up, it feels like being jerked around.