10 years after four suspicious deaths closed its doors, Carvell is open once more, ready to shape the lives of the next generation. Lottie is thrilled to be part of this new class, hopeful to uncover the truth about these deaths, specifically the one that took the life of a family friend. But the shadow of death lingers in the halls and it’s not long before history repeats itself. Add in a soul-splitting ritual and snarky, but beautiful, roommate Alice, Lottie has her work cut out for her if she’s going to discover the truth.

I wanted to love this book so bad. The dark academia, the murder mystery, the thriller element. But I found I just couldn’t get myself into the characters or the plot. Some of the dialogue felt repetitive, parts felt entirely unrealistic (even for magical realism) and I just couldn’t get myself into the story.

I’m always down for a retelling, but this one felt too forced. Especially when Lottie references how their story parallels Jekyll and Hyde after a class reading. The illusion was gone for me. It felt like it was trying to hard to tell the audience what it was. It’s unfortunate because you can see the elements of Jekyll and Hyde coming through without being told what they are. The plot is really interesting. Soul-splitting, possession, murder, mania. I could have enjoyed it better if it was a little faster paced at the beginning and slower and the end. The beginning seemed to drag on and on and then it hit 70% and it was like an info dump of everything all at once. Twists and turns are good, but too many at once made me feel like I was spinning in circles. While I loved the eventually revealed core concept of the book, I feel like it took too long to get there.

I did really liked the setting of the book, this old covenant converted into a university. The book felt pretty character driven, but the characters were immature and kind of unlikable. Who drinks someone’s blood without considering all the reasons that isn’t a good idea, even if it’s only a drop? Both Lottie and Alice felt stereotypical to the roles they were assigned as goth/jock. I wanted to love them together but I just didn’t see the build up and I think Lottie considering her sexuality could have been handled better.

This wasn't a bad book by any means. It just didn't feel like it was the book for me.

This Dark academia YA book was so good. I loved the Gothic dark and mysterious vibes it was giving. It made me want to read this book at night and curl up with just a book light on! It was so perfect! This was a 5 star read for me and I loved the characters and the setting and the actual writing style.
I just reviewed The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven. #TheSocietyforSoullessGirls #NetGalley
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I loveddd this book. It is the perfect Halloween read and allowed me to pretend it was spooky season even though it is mid-july. I loved the character development as I found both alice and lottie unlikable in different ways but by the end of the novel, I adored them both.

DNF @30%

I was excited for this because of the old murder aspect, but I definitely didn't make it that far. Alice as a character was an instant turn off as a caricature of a goth/emo kid who's opening scene was being an @$$hole to campus staff and then her new roommate she'd never met. Maybe we eventually get rationale as to why she's so defensive, but I just wasn't feeling it. Lottie also didn't do anything for me to want to finish this book.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley for the paperback release.

"The Society for Soulless Girls" was a sufficiently creepy gothic thriller. It takes a while before it is clear whether the author is going to hit the right note in terms of the paranormal aspect, but she does so successfully. [I find that "horror" novels are often either trite or absurd to the point of being ridiculous.] In Carvell Academy of the Arts, the author has created a fitting setting for a gothic plotline. The major characters are great, especially the dynamic between roommates Lottie and Alice, who start out as enemies of sort but develop a friendship (and possibly something more) based on mutual terror and need. However, my favorite character is probably Hafsah. The villains and their motives are both surprising and not surprising, and the main villain has been masterful at manipulating people and situations to further their agenda. A central theme is female anger, and how to "control" or repress it, and the ramifications of such actions.

Dark academia ya book with Gothic and Dr. jekyll themes. LGBT friendly book. Duel pov to get insight from different characters.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC! I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Lottie & Alice are as different as night & day. Thrown together as roommates, the two end up playing crucial roles in the other’s life. The school they’re at, which has just reopened after being closed due to multiple deaths, holds more secrets than they realize. If you’re looking for dark academia/enemies to lovers - this is for you!

Oh. My. This book was amazing and perfect and it seriously just blew my mind! It’s the perfect allegory for why feminism needs to exist. Women have been oppressed, harassed, and beaten down since the beginning of time. We need to realize our strength and power, this book definitely helped me realize how important that is! It was also a very thrilling book and i can’t wait to read more from this author! All in all, incredible and transformative!

This book was the perfect mix of mystery, dark academia, romance & femininity. Fast paced, very good story telling making want to know more. Relatable characters, even balance on likeable & unlikable characters. I will definitely read some more from this author!

Thank you so much to NetGalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Big for the sapphic spooky girls. Thought this was such a fun book to read. Alice and Lottie's chemistry was off the charts and loved their growth throughout the book. Also thought the commentary of "angry girls" being a problem for men to solve was done well.

“Wrath is a sin. I am a sin.”

Anger is a natural feeling. We all experience it more than we’d like to admit, everyone does. So why is it that female rage is the most ridiculed and misunderstood? The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven takes this as its thesis statement of sorts and tackles it head on. Steven presents a sapphic Jekyll and Hyde retelling that begs the question: Why is female rage demonized? Why is male anger so normalized and expected? Fans of The Secret History, The Nun, and Fear Street will find this book to be exactly what they’ve been missing. The romance, along with the pacing, is a tad rushed at points but that seems to be at least slightly intentional. The star of this book is anger in its rawest form. Steven frequently uses the word primal to describe her female character’s feelings of anger. I think that alone paints a good image of what you’re in store for. Can things truly be as black and white as good and evil? Are we all capable of one or both? If dark academia has you in its clutches the way it does most, check out The Society for Soulless Girls in September. Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC!

I really wasn't sure about this book before I read it, but I am glad I gave it a chance, it is a modern retelling of Dr Jekyll and Mr hyde, the author did a great job which surprised me because that can be hard, it is told from dual points of view, thought her did great with that because sometimes it can be confusing but it was pretty straightforward, I thought this was going to be a boarding school mystery book but it was more of a thriller/suspense / true crime book, it really had a little bit of everything even some supernatural and romance. The story itself was pretty decent but I really liked the characters a lot and that kept in the story moving along. I would definitely say a strong four stars, thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this Arc and exchange for an honest review

I really wanted to love this one. I love a good dose of murder and it's even better when there's a supernatural twist. But this one just was not for me.

I found that I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing style, with many details being straight out told to me instead of shown. The characters also weren't my favorite. They felt a bit like cutouts rather than real people that I'd want to read about. Combined, this made for a book that simply was not for me. Of course, this is just my opinion! It has enough darkly mysterious charm that I'm sure others with love!

(I was given an arc of this book through Netgalley in return for an honest review).
Overall Rating:
-Characters: 5/5
-Plot: 3/5
-Setting: 3/5
-Romance: 4/5
-Description: 3/5
-Enjoyment: 4/5

The Society for Soulless Girls is a book about two girls who attend a college that was recently reopened after a string of murders occurs on campus. Lottie, the jock, is attempting to solve the mystery behind the murders while her roommate, Alice, accidentally stumbles upon a ritual that unleashes the supernatural and the dark history of the college.
Overall the premise of this book sounded appealing, but it was kind of slow for the first half. There would be a few chapters where the pace would pick up, but it would always slow back down and I had to push through it. The characters were lovable and humanly flawed which made them all the more endearing. Overall the setting was good, but the history of the ritual and the connections to the college’s history was kind of confusing. The theme, however, was executed excellently.

I was absolutely riveted by The Society for Soulless Girls. I could not put it down. I thought it was so well done. I love sapphic dark academia and this book was everything I needed it to be and more. If you love books where girls get to be a little unhinged, don't hesitate and pick up this book.

A sapphic enemies-to-lovers retelling of Jekyll & Hyde, this dark academia thriller follows two roommates who must solve an infamous cold case of serial murders on their campus after an arcane ritual gone wrong prompts another death.

This was fantastic and felt like it was written specifically for me. Loved it, highly recommend!

I love a good school story, and the Gothic horror twist to the Society for Soulless Girls is unique and compelling. Told in a dual point of view from roommates Lottie and Alice, you are drawn into the mystery of the ominous deaths of four students that had closed Carvell College of the Arts. Lottie, our would-be Sherlock, feels a strong compulsion to solve the murders, as her father/family knew one of the victims. Lottie finds herself pulled to the North Tower, where the murders took place, and she winds up blacking out only to find she has a ruby rosary embedded in her skin and an odd connection to Sister Maria, one of the nuns from the time when Carvell was a convent. Alice, on the other hand, who was suffering from angry impulses, ends up trying a ritual she finds in a "philosophy" book that tears her soul in two, leaving her calm and placid, until the ritual runs out and she becomes homicidal. Together with Hasfah, another student who performed the ritual, Lottie and Alice dig through the threads of mystery. They end up tracking the author of the book down (conveniently, the reversal ritual is missing), only to find that he's gone mad. The girls finally get somewhere when they discover the North Tower and Library are connected and that Dean Mordue and librarian Kate Feathering are involved, leading them to discover the eponymous society. The mystery is neatly wrapped up by the end, with some supernatural events open to interpretation, and not in a way that is immediately obvious to the reader. It's a suspenseful page turner, for sure.

I love a good retelling, especially when it's queer. I'd seen the orginal (?) release of this on tiktok and was super excited to find it on here because I'd ben checking on it in my system for months and it wasn't available so I don't actually know what's up with the publication timeline but its funky. I adored the writing style in this, and I thought the book was incredibly well paced to me feverishly turning the page. It was so refreshing that the main characters weren't the moral beacons of light. I adored Alice. A little heavy at points, I really wish there had been some warning about the animal cruelty but overall great story. And may I just say, nice.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Children's, and Delacorte Press for allowing me to read this book!

SPOILERS AHEAD.

I had been lowkey following this book for some time now-- saw it on a Goodreads list for queer retellings over a year ago, saw it come out in the UK and hoped it would come over to the US. Unfortunately, I think my having waited for it set my expectations too high. I was looking forward to angry girls reacting, repressed rage spilling out and over, and to challenges of raging against patriarchy.

Like many USian theater kids, I loved Arthur's Halloween song of "Jekyll Hyde", and enjoyed the musical, so I was looking forward to adding a book to what I liked.

Things that I liked in the Society for Soulless Girls: the rubies in throats, possession, and helping others. They were newer additions that I thought spoke well-- the rubies too were repressed anger, choking and dangerous, unable to be removed, remarked upon but never questioned, as decorative as they might seem.

Unfortunately, those where my likings ended. As was mentioned before, there was a scene of animal murder that had not been warned for, I also was not fond of Alice, who started out. . . I know getting off on the wrong side is a trope. I know that this book billed as rivals to lovers. Still, it seemed so at odds with being a student? There's stand-offish and there's being an outright jerk to someone you've just met because they're excited to move in-- which clearly, Alice was too.
So too were the outbursts of anger at just about everything-- when a boy asks to borrow ink (are they using inkwells? For the #aesthetic?) Alice shoves him to the ground because he. . .asked a question. There are other times her rage felt way more well-placed, such as when she was experiencing flashbacks or in situations where she wasn't comfortable, where her rage was self-protection.
when she's thinking about how she considers harming others because of inconveniences? Yes, it's during a part where she's more self-reflective of how it isn't normal, to which I'm . . ."get help, Alice, you're in the twenty-first century"

Too, the double "twists", right on top of each other felt. . .flat. Oh, of course they were to blame, but of course they've also been set up the entire time and framed so well even they think they've done it, turns out Everyone Was Innocent (even though the mood swings and threats bring actual attempts?) Maybe if the first came much earlier in the book, maybe the second wouldn't feel so hollow. Or ever, leave the historical murders, and keep the rest the same. It fell flat to me, in a sort of "why even bother", or "this is overcomplicated". It served to seemingly simplify the narrative, and give our raging women an even more of "actually they were the victims all along", when they fully believed they had killed people, and then concealed their murders together. Yes, the men are to blame, but it felt so . . . hollow.

I don't know. Maybe this just wasn't the book for me. I hope others can and will enjoy it!

I'm used to read College stories, but this one had a different theme. There, it is more related to thriller, true crime and a little bit of surnatural than real magic or even fantasy.
Lottie and Alice are two new students at Carvell Academy. The school has been closed for 10 years after strange deaths occured, and they are roommates during this new schoolyear. But Alice is always angry, and doesn't want to be friend with this sunshine and fun and brilliant girl.
But Lottie has a mysterious side too, she's here because she wants to know how the former murders happened.
And she's irremediably attracted to the North Tower where the bodies has been found. And this attraction is far from normal...

Great thriller, I enjoyed the main theme which was the perception of angry women in society. Does it fit for a woman to be angry ? I liked how the author showed this, and how it is slowly deconstructed.
I found the storytelling a little bit slow, and even more the connection between the two girls. That took more than the half of the book for them to begin to be friends.
Lots of litterature references, a small enemies to lovers in the end, and a full women society, yes, I liked this book !