I tried, I really really tried but between the back and forth of the story line and not a good definition of which time (present or past) we are in made it hard to engage. I gave it to 25% of the book completed but could not finish it. The narration was just also something that wasn’t captivating this time and I am a VERY avid audiobook listener so I’ve heard a lot of them!

Have you ever romanticized attending boarding school? This novel left me grateful for every night I was able to go home and leave the school day behind me. "The Divines" is a coming of age novel that leaves you questioning whether you ever really grow up and leave your past behind you. The protagonist, Josephine, struggles with this. Allow she has shed her "Divine" identity that label has, in many ways, shaped her adult self.

I can't say that I "enjoyed." this book. It was a little gritty and at some points it was a bit ugly, but it is very readable. The book was billed as similar to "The Girls" and "Normal People," and I think those are fair comparisons. I would throw out "Prep" as another similar story. I didn't particularly care for any of those books. So take my review with a grain of salt!

Thank you Netgalley for this audiobook of The Divines by Ellie Eaton.

They are called The Divines. The girls who go to St. John the Divine boarding schools. They smoke, drink, have no regard for rules or others, and their parents are rich. Needless to say, the "townies" as they refer to the common townsperson, don't have a high opinion of them.

Jo, or Josephine, has worked hard to escape the memories of being a Divine. She doesn't go to reunions, she doesn't talk about it with her new husband. But now inexplicably, she finds herself drawn back to the old school grounds. Through old memories, and Jo's new life as a mother, we slowly come to discover what about being a Divine has Jo so haunted, and the part she played in all of it.

I really enjoyed this book. It was very rich in plot and character development. I really felt like I understood the characters, and I could feel the tension between school and town. What baffled me the most was the abrupt ending and untied loose ends. But perhaps it was deliberate in order to strongly convey the unrest of the protagonist.

Trigger warning: weight and food disorders, bullying, and childhood trauma.

I wouldn't be surprised if this book is one of the most talked about books of 2021. It is complicated, dark, and intense. Not to mention, incredibly addictive.

The Divines are the elite young women who inhabit St John the Divine. They are entitled but fierce, sneaking cigarettes and boys into their dorms in the middle of the night and driving the staff mad. From the iconic hair flip to their exaggerated pronunciations, these girls are sharp witted and darkly hilarious.

Decades have passed and now Josephine, one of the Divines cannot stop reminiscing obsessing over her time at St Johns. Jo takes us back to her time at the all girls school with blatant honesty about the female sexuality and identity, bringing a raw sense of emotion and matter of fact attitude to this coming of age novel.

What happens when we attempt to relive our childhood memories? How different is our perception of events that occurred in adolescence from those who were also present? Can the past truly haunt us?

The writing you find in The Divines is absolutely masterful. The audio addition I read was addicting to listen to and performed like a true stage performance. I found myself losing track of time thinking back to my old high school memories. It made me wonder if I was as nerdy as I perceived myself to be and how did my class mates view me all those years ago?

I loved every minute of this book. It is sharp in every sense of the word. I cannot wait to see what Ellie Eaton brings us next.

Thank you to #Netgalley and #Harperaudio for the advanced reader copy of #TheDivines for an honest review.

A well-written, scathing story about the traumas teenage girls inflict upon each other at boarding school. Though I was interested in the plot, I had trouble connecting with the main character and any of the others in the book.

In the Divines Josephine grows up in a boarding school for all girls. Every time there is a huge group of girls there is bound to be drama. Even though the school was a religious school the girls were rebellious. They were constantly chain smoking and chasing after boys. They had a reputation around town. In this school the girls struggled with their identities and were constantly bullying each other. When Josephine looked back on her years at the school she was disgusted by herself and her schoolmates. Josephine starts to blur reality when she thinks back on the scandals that took place at this school. This book wasn't horrible but it's not really one I recommend. It kept my interest but a lot of it was super frustrating.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for my gifted copy. I also one a physical copy on goodreads so thank you goodreads as well.

The Divines by Ellie Eaton
✨ Book Review ✨

This debut is a pseudo coming-of-age meets mystery about teenage girls in a boarding school dubbed, “the divines.” Thank you @netgalley for this audiobook version!

What I liked:
🤩 Imogen Church’s narration was ev👏ery👏thing👏 I will definitely be looking for more books narrated by her in the future

🤩 heavily flawed characters— I love a good character driven novel where the characters are equal parts good and evil— so reflective of who we really are.

What I didn’t like:
🙈I hated what Eaton did with one character in a post sex-experiment scene (Lauren)

🙈So. Many. Loose. Ends. in both the individual characters’ stories and the book over all. Maybe that was the intention, but it was ineffective for me.

Word is this one will appeal to you if you like the style of Sally’s Rooney or The Virgin Suicides, neither of which I’m really familiar with. I think it was an interesting debut and I’d definitely be interested to see what this author does next. 👀 The Divines hits bookshelves on January 19, 2021!

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Hasn’t everyone questioned there life? How you think your life was and knew only turns out not to be exactly the same.
Looking forward to more from author.

This was such a lovely book! It included some of my favorite elements: a coming of age story, a setting at a prestigious boarding school, an easily relatable main character, and a little bit of mystery. The Divines flips back and forth between narrator Josephine's present day, and her time at St. John the Divine's boarding school in England. Jo recalls her time as "a Divine" with equal parts nostalgia and horror. She tells of fun filled teenage hijinks, the tenderness of first love, nicknames and sisterhood. But these fond memories are shrouded in the darkness of girlhood drama, bullying, and the bitter pain of not fitting in. This book made me so glad to no longer be a teenage girl! The story is tender, nostalgic, and made me laugh out loud often. One of the better coming-of-age tales I have read recently.

Many thanks to Ellie Eaton, NetGalley, and Harper Audio for an ARC.

First of all, let me begin by saying that this book solidified my fear of British teenagers.

The Divines is an expertly written literary novel that combines measures of hilarity, coldness, and all the trappings of teenage turmoil into one weirdly compelling and moving story. I fully intended to just be *okay* with this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's strange because while reading it I definitely wasn't having any fun ... moments of this book were straight-up cringe-worthy, and it had themes that I typically don't enjoy in books - academia, bullying, flashing backwards and forwards in time - and yet I couldn't stop listening. The narrator of the audiobook completely brought the characters alive and made them feel so realistic and 3D. I think if I would have read a physical copy of this book, a lot of the humor would have been completely lost on me, so hats off to the narrator!

4 stars. This book surprised me.

Although I was intrigued by the story originally, the amount of sexual references overshadowed the story of the novel. Unfortunately this was not a success for me.

The Divines, by Ellie Eaton, is a hard book for me to review. There were times while listening that I wanted to scream at Josephine and other times I felt like hugging her. It was compelling and frustrating at the same time, but in the end I realized I was completely blown away by the story. Imogen Church was the perfect narrator and I’m so glad I listened to this one. I definitely would recommend this coming of age story to anyone.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Audio for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook.

This book was the perfect escape. It was lovely and fun. It was my first book by this author and I will definitely be on the look out for more!!

For a debut novel, I’m super impressed. The writing was really great, especially for a first book. It made me feel like I was there with all of the characters and like I was experiencing what they were experiencing. The book also has a really great atmosphere, and I felt like a could physically see the landscape and feel the environment. I also feel like a author did a really great job capturing the feelings of our teenaged narrator. I felt like a lot of her insecurities and emotion were really accurate and well written.
I think my only real issue here was that I was just kind of underwhelmed by the mystery. There were little things throughout the book that I though would lead to something, but they never did. I loved reading the book and watching the mystery build, but I just don’t think it built to enough.
This book is more than just a mystery, so the big reveal being underwhelming doesn’t take too much away from the rest of it. This was still a really well written and interesting story, and I’ll recommend it to people when it comes out.

I really loved the narrator, Imogen Church. I have listened to things by her before and have always enjoyed her style. The setting for the book was very intriguing to me, as I always love a good boarding school mystery. However, the plot fell flat for me. At the end I kept thinking, I have just a short amount left - how are they going to wrap this up? Nothing felt resolved to me, nor did it feel like there was a sequel coming. The main character, Jo, was likeable enough until the last quarter or so. Then I felt like she was withdrawing from her family and not acting like herself. Overall, this was okay. I liked listening to it, but the story line wasn't great.

I got 20% of the way through this and it reminded me of The Lightness to much at the beginning, slow and I wasn't really sure where it was going. Also, I may have had premature thoughts on it since the narrator voiced 2 audiobooks I wasn't a fan of and it may have given me bad vibes because of that. (She's a great narrator, when you've cringed through 20 hours of other books with the same voice, you can't help but immediately cringe again.)

First and foremost, thank you Netgalley and William Morrow for the free audio advance copy.

Unfortunately, I was quite underwhelmed by the plot and eventual ending of this book.
Initially, I thought it would be a compelling thriller tale. Something about boarding school murders and misbehaviors draws me in. But the plot kept going round and round in circles without ever clearly revealing what happened the infamous night when a girl fell out her dorm window.

We follow Jo, or as an adult know as Josephine. One of the quirks of the young ladies who attended this boarding school was that they all called each other by male names. individually, but as a group they refer to themselves as Divine.
Josephine starts telling her husband little stories about her time at school and what it was like. The novel jumps from present day with Jo grown up and married, to her past school days. There were quite a few scandals--from girls pranking and hazing each other to a consistent stream of dick pics being left around school grounds. The story itself was compelling and these events kept me intrigued, but I wanted to know what the driving force of the novel was going to be. What was Jo trying to uncover and why were we following her adult life and her younger school days? Something is bound to link to two tales, right? Nope...

I kept plodding along hoping something would happen to start clicking the scenes of the story together. Towards the very end, I begin to realize that Jo has been a massively unreliable narrator.
She attends her school reunion and younger girls gush about how they admired her and looked up to her. Her best friend, Skipper (who was portrayed as a very mean girl) spoke to how Jo was the ring leader and The Divines looked to her for direction. Our understanding of the situation from Jo's perspective was the exact opposite. She portrayed herself as the victim in all these adolescent situations, when in fact she was more of the culprit behind the madness.
The story ends with Jo meeting up with her not dead roommate, Jerry. This awkward meeting solidifies my theory that Jo's perception of the past was completely skewed. After a drawn out conversation, finally Jo admits that she hasn't reached out to Jerry in all this time because she thought Jerry was dead. Jerry's reaction is harsh and angry, which shows me Jo left a much crueler impression on people than she lead us to believe.

I suppose the book is a commentary on human perception. How we always view ourselves as the hero when in fact we can really be the villain. We see the world around us through a lens. A lens that distorts the bad behavior and paints those actions in a better light. Jo, as a character, shows just how far we will go to accept ourselves and cope with what we have done.

This book was so good!!! I love the switching from present day and to the past. I loved learning about how the choices the main character made as a school girl really affected her whole life. I wish she had given herself grace some of those decisions but the last can’t be changed and this is a good lesson in learning from your mistakes and making better choices in the future.

3.75/5 ⭐️
This is just about a all girls boarding school and the shit they get up to and the drama and bullying ect. I did like the duo time lines tho

I picked this book up because it was compared to The Girls and I loved that book. This book deffinatly held up to that comparison. The book had a very similar vibe to that book though the writing is far less soft and lyrical. I still liked this book just as much.
I really liked the back and forth from past to present even if that is a bit over used in thrillers I felt it worked really well in this context. I liked feeling like I was jarred back and forth. Thr effect actually made the whole thing feel a little hazy and dream like.
I also liked that none of the characters were particularly likeable. When that is done right it really elevates a story for me and Eaton pulled it off nearly flawlessly. I couldn't stand any of the girls both past and present. I could feel their hatred and abject pettiness seepimg though each page.
Over all this was a solid read. I would deffinatly recommend it though probably as fiction or thriller. I would never label this as women's fiction. That is really my only issue with this book is how ot wad labeled.