Rosie comes from a middle-class upbringing and worked hard to fit in with her uber-wealthy friends on the Yale equestrian team. When Annelise Tattinger joins their team, her talent on horseback and at reading tarot quickly has her joining Rosie’s inner circle. But when money disappears from bank accounts, tensions rise among the friend group.

After graduation, Rosie realizes there is more to Annelise’s history than she thought and she needs to set things right and figure out what happened all those years ago.

Why We Liked it Rachel Kapelke-Dale’s previous stories focus on the #metoo movement and women’s rights, while this one looks at class differences and the wealthy’s disregard for those around them. It’s a medium-paced, character-driven story that’s perfect for dark academia lovers.

I just finished the Fortune Seller by Rachel Kapelke-Dale and here are my thoughts.


Rosie has spent years trying to fit in with her wealthy friends at Yale. All of them on the equestrian team and an easy life lays out in front of them all. She knew what she needed to do until that is, Annelise joined their house and team.

Annelise is a talented tarot reader and amazing horse rider. Then money starts to disappear from one of her wealthy friends' bank accounts. The girls start to turn on each other. It’s long after graduation and Rosie works for a hedge fund now. It’s there she discovers who Annelise really was but is it too late to right a wrong?

I hate horse people. They always seem to feel more entitled than other people and these girls were no exception . Rosie was at least half decent but she was all about the money as well. I didn’t really find this to be a thriller really but I did love all the tarot stuff weaved in it.

It was super well written and I really did enjoy the book but it was a fairly slower paced book and it didn’t ramp up at all so I felt it let me down a bit with that.

I did enjoy this book though and the ending was pretty great. There were some pretty decent twists and I would recommend this book to people who like coming of age books with some dark academia.

3.75 rounded to 4

Thank you to @stmartinspress and @netgalley for my gifted copy. Out NOW!!

I really enjoyed this book - I thought it was fun and would definitely recommend it. I loved the tension and rivalry. It was amazing.

I will update with my review once the SMP boycott has ended.

In the meantime...
#SPEAKUPSMP has three demands:

Address and denounce the Islamophobia/racism from their employee.

Offer tangible steps for how they're going to mitigate the harm this employee caused.

Address how, moving forward, they will support and protect their Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab readers, influencers, and authors in addition to their BIPOC readers, influencers, and authors.

The Fortune Seller was not what I was expecting. It was another book that makes me wonder if I just did college in a weird way. These kinds of cliques were nowhere in my world. Everytime I read about a “friend group” I’m happy I didn’t live that way.

The MC is another poor kid going to a really expensive school trying to keep up with the rich friends she idolizes no matter what they do. As she grows, she starts to see the world a little more clearly. She starts to see how truly messed up her priorities are. There is a death that is almost forgotten pretty quickly. I mean, I need to get that job instead of worrying about anything like that, right?

The book wasn’t bad and it did avoid many of the cliches I was worried it would devolve into. It’s my first book by this author. I’d read her again.

While I enjoyed this book, I was disappointed it was not nearly as dark as Kapelke-Dale's other books, specifically The Ingenue and The Ballerinas. The Tarot card portion is interesting, and I didn't mind all the horse talk, but the mysteries fell flat for me and the characters were mostly two dimensional. There was an attempt at commentary on social class, but it wasn't fleshed out enough. Is this an enjoyable book to spend an afternoon with? Sure. Should you expect much more than that? Not really.

"Middle-class Rosie Macalister has worked for years to fit in with her wealthy friends on the Yale equestrian team, but when she comes back from her junior year abroad with newfound confidence, she finds the group has been infiltrated by the mysterious Annelise Tattinger.

A talented tarot reader and a brilliant rider, the Annelise is unlike anyone Rosie has ever met--but when one of their friends notices money disappearing from her bank account, Annelise's place in the circle is thrown into question. As the women turn against each other, the group’s unspoken tensions and assumptions lead to devastating consequences.

It's only after graduation, when Rosie begins a job at a Manhattan hedge fund, that she begins to uncover Annelise's true identity--and how her place in their elite Yale set was no accident. Is it too late for Rosie to make right what went wrong, or does everyone's luck run out at some point?"

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

THE FORTUNE SELLER is a dark academia novel that examines class and ambition, through the lens of student on the Yale equestrian team.

I was so fascinated by the characters, their different backgrounds, and their experience on an equestrian team at an Ivy League. Horses and that whole world has always been interesting to me. I’ve never gotten into the tarot world, but I loved how Kapelke-Dale brought these two topics together.

Read if you like —
🐎 horses
🔮 tarot
🏫 the ivies
🖤 dark academia

The writing is stunning and the short chapters kept me turning the pages. THE FORTUNE SELLER is an enthralling slow-burn mystery filled with secrets and tension.

First thank you to st martins press for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis: Rosie is part of the Yale horse team but she is not like all of the others. When they agree to live in a house together. Rosie is paired with Annalise who transferred from the west coast. Annalise is a tarot card reader but that is not the only mystery about her.

What I liked: although this book was well written and the author is highly regarded, I wasn’t able to connect with the characters and didn’t really enjoy the book like others. I love tarot cards and getting a reading periodically but these characters were very much into readings. The mystery story was interesting along with the class struggle but I didn’t feel the execution lived up to the premise. If you are really into horses and tarot card, this book is for you.

The Fortune Seller by Rachel Kapelke-Dale. #NetGalley, Thank you for the ARC. This is the first book in years to keep me reading until the wee hours of the morning. The structure based around a deck of Tarot cards may sound cheesy but it is the furthest thing from that, given each chapter was a soulful reflection of the cards meaning. There is a sweet love story but that is an anecdote not at all the focus, which is female relationships, the power and destruction of wealth. However, the overwhelming theme is knowing that the right thing to do is always at our fingertips if we just slow down, take a breath and listen to ourselves. Now I’m off to find my own cards long ago tucked away in a drawer wrapped in one of my mother’s old scarves.

The Fortune Seller is an adult contemporary novel about a young woman enmeshed in the rivalry behind the equestrian team at Yale.

Rosie Macalister left small town Indiana to ride horses among the elite daughters of the wealthy at Yale. Although she is an excellent rider she is at a disadvantage because her lessons were limited to the free summer camps offered by billionaire hedge fund manager Grayson Tate’s charity. But now years later she’s on the Yale team with Grayson’s daughter (Cressida) and part of her inner circle despite not having the disposable income of the other girls. After spending her junior year abroad Rosie returns to Yale to discover that Cressida has her sharing a room with the mysterious new team member Annelise. But despite her reservations Rosie quickly finds herself drawn to Annelise who is both a talented rider and a tarot card reader. But not all the team members trust the new member with the vague background and lines begin to be drawn. Rosie finds herself stuck between her enigmatic new friend and the rest of the women.

Like her other novels Rachel Kapelke-Dale introduces us to a niche lifestyle that only a small percentage of people experience. Through Rosie we learn exactly what it takes to get accepted and succeed at Yale but it’s clear that children of the elite have a leg up in both academics and sports. I appreciated that the author didn’t make Cressida and the rest of the team cartoony villains but instead spoiled and out of touch young women whose entitlement knows no bounds. I especially enjoyed the second half of the book where Rosie joins the workforce at Tate Associates and sees the dark side of high finance.

Though not exactly a thriller this is a coming of age novel with elements of mystery and suspense. Starting each chapter with a tarot card and a description of what it means was a really creative way to foreshadow was going to happen next. It has a great pace and a likable main character that struggles balancing her ambition and what is right. I enjoyed The Fortune Seller and look forward to what Rachel Kapelke-Dale will write next!

Thank you to St Martin's Press for access via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
The Fortune Seller (publishing 2/13/24) is the author’s latest release, and I've read her previous books, The Ballerinas and The Ingenue. All three books can be considered women's fiction with mysterious undertones, and the author does an incredible job of defining the characters.
In this book, college senior Rosie has returned to Yale and her small group of fellow female equestrian friends after a year abroad in Argentina. While she was abroad, a transfer student joined the team and her one friend who remained at Yale. Now that Rosie is back, she is rooming with the transfer student and, while Rosie has her initial hesitations, they become close rather quickly. Annelise, the new girl, teaches Rosie about tarot cards and reading fortunes. The book follows senior year as well as the first year after graduation. I had trouble setting the book down once I began, because I was completely sucked into Rosie's world. I foresaw one big twist before it hit - that always makes me feel like I am really paying attention! I think there is one mystery (at least) that still remains at the end, and I have my opinions about that...

I found the first half of this book to be a little too "horse girl" for me with a much slower pace, but ultimately understood how the pieces fit together later. I liked the tease of the tarot cards and felt those added depth to the book. The second half definitely picked up, but the pacing felt just a bit off for me overall. Still recommend this one to fans of this author and I look forward to her next release!

Dive into a genre-bending tale that defies labels and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Meet our protagonist, a regular kid navigating the opulent world of Yale's elite, but with a supernatural twist that turns the old tropes on their head.

This isn't your typical "women's fiction" – it's a gripping page-turner that delves into the complexities of class and privilege while infusing a fresh dose of paranormal intrigue. Picture a world where the ordinary clashes with the extraordinary, where the halls of academia hold secrets darker than the ivy that adorns them.

As our hero grapples with the challenges of fitting in among the wealthy and privileged, they also discover a hidden power within themselves that sets them apart in ways they never imagined. It's a journey that takes the age-old trope and catapults it into the 21st century, blending elements of mystery, fantasy, and suspense in a tale that's as captivating as it is unexpected.

So buckle up and prepare for a ride unlike any other, where the lines between reality and the supernatural blur, and the only certainty is that nothing is as it seems.

3.5⭐️

The Fortune Seller is a generally entertaining story, with a commentary on class mixed in with a mystery and plenty of horse talk and tarot reading. That said, it drags in some parts, I saw the twists and solution to the mystery elements a mile away, and the romantic side story felt unnecessary and lacking in spark. I enjoyed this enough to see it through to the finish, and would recommend it for a light quick read.

Thank you Rachel Kapelke-Dale, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

This was a doozy of a book. The two main mysteries unfolded very well and I enjoyed seeing how the character’s dealt with the aftermath. Each chapter begins with an explanation of how tarot cards can be interpreted and I found it very enlightening. There was a lot of talk about class and the differences between wealth which Kapelke Dale handled well. I did the audiobook and really enjoyed Stephanie Cannon’s narration.

•Coming of age
•Early 2000's setting
•Equestrian
•Friendship

Suspenseful and mystical. I love the tarot card references and their tie-in to each chapter. I am always up for an upper crust story as they completely intrigue me. I don't feel like you have to have a ton of knowledge of the equestrian world to read this but it would make more relatable and enjoyable.

3.5 stars

The Fortune Seller is one of those books that starts off seeming like one thing but turns into something completely different. In the first half, we meet five young women in their final year at Yale. Four of them have been friends the past few years, but Annelise is a newcomer to the group. She and our protagonist Rosie become roommates, sharing a room in the house all five of them are renting. While the other three friends are extremely wealthy and can’t relate to Rosie’s middle class background, she finds a kindred spirit in Annelise… even if she doesn’t really know anything about her. As enigmatic as Annelise is, she quickly wins her new friends over with her kindness, sunny disposition, and love of giving tarot readings.

Much of this book is abut class and money. On the one hand, three of Rosie’s friends have billionaire parents—a stark contrast to the veterinarians her own parents are. Rosie’s chosen to study economics with a goal of working in finance and becoming rich herself. She doesn’t want to have the limitations she grew up with; she wants to fit in with her rich friends and always be financially secure, even if it means denying her true passions. Wealth comes into everything, including how well the five women do in their horse club. They all ride and compete, but sometimes getting the right (expensive) horse can make the difference between a blue ribbon and not placing.

There are some elements of dark academia, with the Yale backdrop and the increasing infighting between this group of friends. Someone is stealing money, someone is keeping major secrets, and all seem to be on edge as their senior year kicks off. Equally, though, this book is a coming-of-age story about a woman finding her place in the world, both with her friends and with her career.

I enjoyed seeing the horsemanship and horse events. Growing up, I loved horses, but only got to ride a few times. To this day I still like reading about horses and the people who work with them. Another major theme, of course, is the tarot cards and their descriptive abilities. Annelise is a passionate tarot reader and is teaching Rosie about the cards’ meanings and interpretations. Though I don’t know a whole lot about tarot cards, I do enjoy similar occult interests like astrology, so I found this aspect fascinating and fun.

The first half of The Fortune Seller feels like it’s leading up to a big mystery about Annelise, maybe with the potential to be a full-on thriller. And while some major events do happen, the second half changes gears rather dramatically. Rosie is now a graduate and working in Manhattan. Her friendships with the other girls have morphed, and she’s starting to question things in a way she never had before. The biggest through-line is really the financial aspect of everything: the haves versus have-nots; the desire to become someone else or attain what others already have; the realization of how much power money can give access to. I grew up rather poor myself, and a lot of these money-focused themes and lessons resonated with me, even if I never tried to keep up the way Rosie does. But it changes the scope of what could have been a thriller, keeping it more firmly in the realms of drama and women’s fiction.

The Fortune Seller is a book that sucks you in, about young women finding themselves through friendship and a career. It’s about secrets and money, with mean pranks and sugar-coated tarot readings and major lessons to be learned. I’ve enjoyed both of the Rachel Kapelke-Dale books I’ve read so far—now I just need to finally read The Ballerinas before her next novel comes out!

For years, Rosie Macalister has hidden her middle-class upbringing from her equestrian teammates at Yale. By senior year, she finally feels like she fits in, and she arrives back from a year abroad excited to share a house with three of her teammates. But when she returns to school, she’s surprised to learn that there’s a fourth house-mate—a new girl who seems to have taken her place in the friend group and on the team. Despite her initial resentment, Rosie soon realizes why her friends love the new girl so much. Annelise is a tarot card reader, a generous friend, and one of the best riders any of them have ever seen. But when money starts disappearing from one of the housemate's bank accounts, the girls become suspicious of Annelise and her mysterious past. A year later when Rosie begins working for her friend’s father, she begins to unravel the details of Annelise’s past. She has to decide for herself whether she should do what’s right or what will provide financial security for her future.

This is a brilliant exploration of class, power, privilege, identity, and friendship, and I was as riveted as I was horrified while I read. I knew basically nothing about the equestrian world before reading this novel, but I felt like I recognized these characters so clearly from attending a prestigious university. Kapelke-Dale captured these characters brilliantly, and even their worst behavior felt believable. The tarot cards served as both a storytelling mechanism and foreshadowing throughout the novel, and it felt like a character’s idiosyncrasy rather than a gimmick. I had no expectations when I started this book, but I couldn’t put it down.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a delightfully twisty entry into the dark academia genre. At the risk of sounding dreadfully cliché, everyone is keeping secrets from each other, but it’s not until Rosie returns from study abroad that everything begins to unravel.

The pacing is perfect: taut at the tense moments, and then breezing over what the reader is supposed to perceive as unimportant. Narrator Rosie is fairly reliable; she’s both an outsider and a member of an inner circle. She knows her place is precarious, but she’s determined to make it work.

Admittedly, I began to harbor suspicions, and some of them proved to be correct. However, there were other things managed to shock me. I had no idea what was going to happen until the very end.

I would have liked to have seen more of the Yale experience, but I think that’s part of the mystique: these EQ girls are set apart from the rest of their cohort—they are quite literally not like other girls. This dynamic makes Rosie beholden to the others; she doesn’t have anyone else to turn to.

I don’t know very much about tarot, but I loved how well it worked with the narrative on so many levels. I can’t say anything more, other than nothing is as what it appears and that the future isn’t always as clear as we might make it out to be.

I would absolutely recommend The Fortune Seller. I am going to be thinking about this book for a long time. It was very clever, and I’m going to have to re-read because I know there are little moments that I missed during my first readthrough. I want to the rest of Kapelke-Dale’s other books now!



I received a digital ARC of this book from St. Martin’s/NetGalley

The Fortune Seller was a yarn of a read.

Rosie is a poor girl who is going to Yale and is a member of the equestrian team, not exactly a sport for the poor. her roommates and friends are all daughters of wealthy families with money to burn. After a semester abroad, Rosie returns to find that golden girl Cressida Tate has made a new friend and has invited her to room with Rosie and their other friends/roommates Lila and Andra. Cressida is enamored of new girl Annelise, but Rosie is not so sure. Annelise does appear great on paper, a wonderful equestrian and a talented Tarot reader, but something seems off. Then the weird stuff starts to happen and a tragedy that tests the bounds of friendship.

I enjoyed this book and the look at the wealhy and privileged. A fun read overall.

Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press and the author for the chance to read and review this book.