I absolutely loved this thriller! It gives me Harry Potter meets Legacies and a little bit of the new Wednesday show. I love the writing style of Faridah and it was so easy to read I didn't want to put it down. I want a friend like Baz! I would def recommend this to anyone who loves a good boarding school thriller, with some LGBTQ themes, and twists and turns. What caught my eye initially was the cover, it pulls you in and makes you want to know who this girl is! I want to read Ace of Spades now that I have read this one.

There so much more to this book than meets the eye and I’m so happy I read it. What started off as a mystery of a missing girl turns into a really complex and nuanced look at classism, sexism and racism. I thought Sade was a really intriguing character and I enjoyed being inside her head. I loved her friendship with Baz so much. I loved the boarding school setting and the atmospheric feel it had. My only complaint was that the pacing was a little strange. The disappearance happens pretty fast and then for the majority of the middle, it’s a lot of slower paced set up and Sade getting to know the other students. Which, I do think is important to the story, but I think it could have been condensed a bit to make the story progress a bit quicker in the middle. However, around 60 some percent, the story gets going and GET READY. This story will infuriate you at times and it’s supposed to. This definitely won’t be my last book by Àbíké-Ìyìmìdè.

TW: animal death, rape, sexual assault, violence, suicide, sexism, classism

Thank you to NetGalley and Feiwel and Friends for an advanced digital reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

It might be that I'm looking for something more unique in the dark academia/mystery/thriller scene for YA right now and the plot taking place at a boarding school with a dead body and mean girls seems a bit ho-hum right now. And that was how I ended up reading most of the book having picked it up and put it down on too many occasions for me to fly through it because I devoured the story and characters.

This, likely coupled with the fact that I didn't love Ace of Spades might also mean there's a bit of Abike-Iyimide's writing or approach that doesn't suit me (similar to my continued attempts at AS King and MT Anderson which are more fails than wins).

Alas, I will keep trying, but this one wasn't it. But I will certainly push it in my library because I know their value and worth! Popularity over my specific love for it.

Where Sleeping Girls Lie is a powerful novel about the frustration of injustice surrounding sexual assault.

Surrounded by loss, Sade enrolls in a boarding school after years of homeschool. Her first day there, her roommate Elizabeth disappears, and Sade finds herself entrenched in a mystery while trying to navigate the social hierarchy where dangerous secrets lurk.

I love YA thrillers, and this is a really good addition to the category. Sade's frustration with the school administration is palpable and for good reason. Though the Sapphic relationship was hinted at early on, it still felt like it came out of left field when it finally happened. I liked that all the loose ends were tied up nicely, and the ending was realistic. There are graphic depictions of grief, sexual assault, and suicide, so take care reading.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review!

Ace of Spades was such a riveting debut that the author was basically competing against herself. Where Sleeping Girls Lie is a great follow-up to her first novel. Set in a boarding school, there are twists and turns around every corner as the protagonist deals with her own issues and the drama she may have brought to the school. The majority of the book is spent on a whodunit scenario, and the payoff was well worth it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this book!

I was so excited to read this book after loving Ace of Spades, but unfortunately, this one missed the mark for me. When reading and reviewing YA books, I try to read them through the lens of the teen readers in my classroom and my first thought with this book was that 99% of them would put it down due to the slow pacing. Despite the fact that a character disappears early on, not a lot happens until almost 70% into the book. I was invested enough in the mystery to keep going, but the ending/message didn't offer anything that has not been done in other books.

Sade is starting at a boarding school part of the way through her third year. After her first day, her roommate, Elizabeth, goes missing. Some clues lead her to believe that she didn't leave of her own accord.

Sadly, this book did not work for me at all. First of all, it did not earn over 400 pages. Easily, this book could have been 100 pages shorter. I also felt like there was too much going on? Like by the time I got to the point where the plot was picking up (67% of the way through), I just didn't care. I don't think that some of the personal motivations for bringing justice needed to be included.

Overall, this book was too slow and by the time I got to the 67% mark, I just didn't care.

I was a huge fan of ACE OF SPADES so I was deeply excited to hear about this book when it was announced, and it completely lived up to my expectations while still surprising me along the way. Even as I tried to guess where the book would go, there were still twists and turns that caught me by surprise, and that were fun even as some heavier content was dealt with in the last third of the book (which I sped through because I couldn’t stop trying to figure out what was happening). The characters were so interesting and for the most part ended up being complex, some even leaving me with slightly unanswered questions at the end of the book. I almost wish we’d gotten more time to explore everything at the end of the book, but I was satisfied (mostly) to see how everything ended up, and I would recommend this book wholeheartedly.

The core of this book is the mystery and the characters that are involved. When it first begins, it’s a little bit hard to figure out where this book is going to go, and maybe it would have benefitted from a few more hints about Sade’s life before the bigger reveals, but I was still hooked from the very beginning. What’s always so satisfying about Àbíké-Íyímídé’s books is the way that the mystery is wrapped up in layers and layers of plot that we only get to unravel at the end, and finally seeing what was inside the whole time. This is a story of corruption and power and toxicity but it’s also its own story completely separate from ACE OF SPADES, while still being just as good (and with an easter egg or two). No character was exactly what I expected from the beginning (except maybe Bas), and it was so fun to see what threads ended up connecting.

Character relationships ended up being incredibly interesting in this book (as I honestly expected, even if I couldn’t predict how), and it makes something relatively real still be able to feel like a unique story is being told rooted in reality. It’s a little hard to talk about the best parts of this book without spoiling anything, but I can say I loved to see the characters finally get what they deserved (positive and negative), and the way that gray areas are completely exploited. And I do in fact love some good sapphic tension which is absolutely at play without superseding the mystery. Once again, I loved reading this and basically sped through the last third of it like my life depended on it because I couldn’t put it down, and it was all absolutely worth the read!

This is a tough one. I love this author and really loved their first novel. I tried to go into this with no expectations but I think I still may have. This book fell a bit flat for me.

I'll start with what worked in the book. The author perfectly captured the creepy, menacing, Big Brother factor that was needed for this novel and gave a thrilling air to it, especially the second half. There were a few parts that made me gasp but not as many as I was expecting. Side characters Baz and Muffin were lovely as well. I also really enjoyed the Mean Girls social group breakdowns and references.

Unfortunately, the bad far outweighs the good on this one. The main character Sade was pretty captivating, I just wish her backstory would have been slowly revealed rather than all at once (as Elizabeth's and Alice's were). There were too many moving parts and plot lines, as well as red herrings of who was suspicious and who wasn't. This resulted in a somewhat lackluster resolution to the novel, with some parts even coming off rushed. The book also started out wayyy too slow and somewhat boring and didn't get interesting until someone disappeared.

Probably one of the biggest issues with this book I had were that it could have done with significant editing and did not need to be over 400 pages long. While long, many times scenes were focused on such unimportant daily life things that could've been better spent. Throughout the book, there was also numerous occasions where very obvious conclusions or links to clues could have been connected way sooner than they were, leaving me to think either the main character was not that smart or the author was dumbing down their plots for the audience- which was pretty frustrating and made the story drag on even more.

The main message of the book - that men, no matter how nice, can and likely will contribute or outright enable rape culture = felt like a very "no shit" message and didn't have the intended effect the author was going for.

I think Faridah tried to recreate that systematic, insidious understanding that her first novel Ace of Spades captured. Unfortunately for me, this novel didn't

I, love Faridah writing and this story is beautifully written. There is a lot of mystery at this academy and I enjoyed the way that Sade navigated all the twist and turns. Faridah always does a great job of the taking the reader down a path of depth and self discovery. Although the setup and back story is great, I do feel the story at time dragged and the real heart of the story was toward the end. Overall I am a Faridah fan and I would recommend.

3.5 stars

Sade Hussein is the new girl at Alton Nobel Academy, a prestigious boarding school in London, and she’s packed secrets along with her designer clothes. Sade is haunted by her family’s dark past, but quickly bonds with her roommate, Elizabeth, and her best friend, Basil. Until Elizabeth disappears.

When the administration’s response is lackluster, Sade and Baz are determined to find Elizabeth. In between sleuthing sessions, Sade finds herself befriending the popular crowd and catching the attention of the queen bee’s ex boyfriend. This all makes sense if Mean Girls has taught us anything, since she’s only ever been homeschooled until now. But of course, the cool kids are hiding things too, and Sade starts to wonder if they know what happened to Elizabeth. Then someone turns up dead, and all hell breaks loose.

This book was a slow start that focused a lot on the day to day activities of boarding school before the last 25% shifted to just rapid fire reveals. I was left with a lot of unanswered questions, though. There were a bunch of mysterious loose threads set up at the start that just didn’t all come together for me, despite the info dump of the reveals. The subject matter of some of the twists was a little depressing, also, so if you have any triggers definitely check warnings, because it went a way I wasn’t anticipating.

I love this book’s concept and think this could be 4-5 stars for some people. But I’ve read a lot of similar stories, and this version just didn’t stand out for me. Baz is by far the best part of this world, and I’d read a whole book about him stealing Guinea pigs and causing general mayhem. All the stars for Baz. Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Loved this one! It was full of twists and very suspenseful. I found myself hooked from the first chapter.

I am devastated to report that this book was a huge miss from me. The plot doesn’t pick up until about 60% in, despite an intriguing start, and honestly the focus is so different than what we’re led to expect from the beginning (in a way that isn’t a cleverly hidden twist but instead more like a sudden U-turn through the median on the freeway). The beginning and random snippets throughout tease us with this dead girl, but honestly she’s not relevant to much of anything except to try to make our main girl Sade doubt herself. Until we finally figure out who she is in a huge infodump at about 80%. And then we get another infodump at 88% to explain the red herring plot that we were fed in the beginning and occasionally reminded of throughout.

Also, these kids don’t speak like kids. There’s no slang; they talk super formally - and occasionally that’s mentioned as kind of a joke (like “oh you sound like Jane Austen”) but it’s constant across all the characters that you can’t even make a joke like that land. And so often characters are referred to by their one defining characteristic (ie “the blonde-haired girl” or “he of the ice blue eyes” - I kid you not) when we know everyone’s names pretty much right away.

Once we did finally hit that 67% mark, though, the plot was off like a shot, to the point where it felt like a totally different book. Revelations were coming at us right and left, with perilous consequences; but they flew by so fast they didn’t have time to land. Could have used more of the real estate taken up by nothing much in the first half to lend weight to the later events. And I will say I liked the resolution.

But the whole thing lacked the impact, the tension that Ace of Spades nailed so well.

"In Where Sleeping Girls Lie - a YA contemporary mystery by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, the New York Times-bestselling author of Ace of Spades - a girl new to boarding school discovers dark secrets and coverups after her roommate disappears.

It's like I keep stumbling into a dark room, searching for the switch to make things bright again...

Sade Hussein is starting her third year of high school, this time at the prestigious Alfred Nobel Academy boarding school after being home-schooled all her life. Misfortune has been a constant companion all her life, but even Sade doesn't expect her new roommate, Elizabeth, to disappear after Sade's first night. Or for people to think she had something to do with it.

With rumors swirling around her, Sade catches the attention of the girls collectively known as the 'Unholy Trinity' and they bring her into their fold. Between learning more about them - especially Persephone, who Sade is inexplicably drawn to - and playing catchup in class, Sade already has so much on her plate. But when it seems people don't care enough about what happened to Elizabeth to really investigate, it's up to she and Elizabeth's best friend to solve it.

And then a student is found dead.

As they keep trying to figure out what's going on, Sade realizes there's more to Alfred Nobel Academy and its students than she thought. Secrets lurk around every corner and beneath every surface...secrets that rival even her own."

Technically not dark academia, but technically yes...

This was everything I wanted in a YA dark academia mystery. I could not put this book down. The characters were so dynamic and it felt like I was there at that creepy school. This was such a wonderful sophomore book.

You should go into this book knowing NOTHING, just start it (after you have checked the trigger warnings).

Revealing too much would be a spoiler, but just know that this is a solid addition to the dark academia genre with a sprinkle of mean girls. in this environment, not everything- or everyone is as they seem.

Recently orphaned Sade Hussein has had a cloud of death and misfortune following her entire life, and as an incident not long after her start at an elite boarding school proves to her, she can not escape her ghosts: both metaphorical and literal. Sade is somewhat of an unreliable narrator, so she fits in well in a place where so many dark secrets are hidden inside a shiny exterior. As Sade delves deeper into the life of Alfred Nobel Academy, she will learn that the school will do whatever it takes to protect its golden boys students, no matter the cost to everyone else.

It does take until the second half of the book for it really to kick into gear, but by this point I became quite fond of Sade, her story and the people around her. Faridah really surprised me with how much i enjoyed the second half, taking an up until this point 3-star read and really elevating the story to another level. This is a perfect example of an excellent premise and execution with a strong finish.

If any of this sounded interesting to you, I would definitely recommend picking up Where Sleeping Girls Lie.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

3.5

****TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assult****
Where Sleeping Girls Lie follows Sade who is starting her third year of high school at the Alfred Nobel Academy boarding school, Sade has never been to a real school before she has always been home-schooled. On her first night, her roommate Elizabeth disappears. Rumors start swirling around the school and Sade catches the attention of the popular girls in school. Sade decides to figure out what happened to Elizabeth. Sade soon learns that there is more to the school and its students. Secrets start coming out and people end up dead. It is up to Sade to get to the end of it before more terrible things start to happen. 

I really enjoyed this book a lot. I would have rated this higher but this book was a little too long and drawn out. I also felt like some of the things the characters went through were a little too childish for me. I mean that does make sense because this is a YA book. But other than those things I really enjoyed this book. This one will keep you on the edge of your seat. I also liked the tiny Mean Girls reference in this book. I loved the setting of this book and the over all plot. I really did not want to put this one down. Also, how stunning is this cover? I have had this author on my radar for a really long time and I can not wait to read more books by her. If you like mystery / Thriller books I would highly suggest this one.

“A few years ago, I thought I died, but I’ve been told that was a lie, so I guess I’m a liar.”

Sade has been homeschooled for her entire life, but after the death of her father she decides to go against his wishes and enroll into a boarding school for her junior year. Sade doesn’t even have time to get herself settled before her roommate disappears and sinister secrets of the prestigious academy start coming out of the woodwork. Can Sade keep the ghosts of her past at bay long enough to save her roommate from joining them?


When your girl got approved for an arc of Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé I was so unbelievably hyped. Ace of Spades was the book that got me to rethink my stance on thrillers, and so I’m really bummed to say that Where Sleeping Girls Lie was…well y’all, it was just really boring.

There was just not enough suspense or action to keep me invested in the story as it went on, the romance that Sade had felt really lackluster and forced, and the adults just seemed too oblivious to be believable. The overall theme this story was going for was great it just did not come together for me at all. 2.75 stars rounded up.

Sade doesn't even wait for her domineering father's corpse to cool before enrolling herself at a boarding school to finally experience a normal teenager's life. However, something is deeply wrong at Alfred Nobel Academy. Sade's roommate Elizabeth vanishes and the administration doesn't even care. The only noticeable effect is Sade's sudden notoriety, which earns her the attention of the school elites, especially the alluring Persephone. Sade didn't harm Elizabeth, but she does have secrets that will combine explosively with ANA's dark underbelly. The first half drags, until Sade starts to put the clues together. Pleasingly multifaceted characters, including the antagonists.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

𝘼 𝙔𝘼 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙢𝙮𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙖 𝙜𝙞𝙧𝙡 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙤𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙨𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙤𝙡 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙙𝙖𝙧𝙠 𝙨𝙚𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙪𝙥𝙨 𝙖𝙛𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨.

I was a big fan of this author’s previous book, Ace Of Spades, so I was eagerly waiting to read another book by this author.

This was an interesting YA mystery that immediately pulled me in. I love a good story that’s set in a boarding school and this one was no exception.

While this did feel more like a slow burn with not much of a thrilling aspect, I still found the mystery to be interesting. These characters were all fascinating and I was so invested in seeing where the story was heading.

Sade was an interesting character starting her new adventure at Alfred Nobel Academy. I won’t say too much about the story itself because it’s better knowing less.

There are a few triggers in this book - just a heads up.

This definitely was a layered mystery and I had a fun time reading it. It was slow at times, but the diverse cast of characters had me so intrigued. Ace Of Spades was a five-star read for me, and this one was also a great book!

Thank you so much NetGalley and Feiwel & Friends for the review copy in exchange for my honest review!