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When Lenny’s family moves from Miami to the Pacific Northwest, she’s cautiously optimistic. But her new life shatters in the wake of a sudden tragedy. In the throes of her grief, she’s sent to Blanchard, an elite boarding school that offers another chance for reinvention. Here, Lenny decides what kind of woman she wants to be even as a murder mystery clouds her future. In her debut novel, Raphael offers an eerie coming-of-age story. She portrays the hallmarks of adolescence—the life-changing friendships, the loneliness, the optimism—with depth and curiosity. Lenny is an outsider at Blanchard; her place in the world feels unstable even as she’s seduced by the wealth and promise of belonging. A sense of dread suffuses the novel as the aftermath of the murder is interwoven with the main plot. This tension keeps the story moving; when the truth is finally revealed, there’s a satisfying blend of adrenaline-fueled spectacle and character development. Readers looking for dark, tragic stories set in academia will find much to enjoy.

Publishers Weekly
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A woman reflects on the suspicious death of her boarding school classmate in Raphael’s riveting debut. In chapters titled “Before,” 15-year-old Lenny Winter describes her childhood on a houseboat in Port Angeles, Wash., with her mother and stepfather. After her mother’s untimely death, Lenny is accepted to the ritzy Blanchard School on scholarship, where she struggles to fit in with the offspring of the Pacific Northwest’s rich and privileged. To remedy that, she befriends members of Blanchard’s secretive Pascalianum Club, setting her on a course that ends with the violent death of one of the club’s members—and Lenny insisting she’s not responsible for it. Chapters titled “After” and set in the present feature an adult Lenny reflecting on her experiences at Blanchard, with Raphael doling out tantalizing clues about what happened all those decades ago, and why it might still be on a grown-up Lenny’s mind. The core mystery helps the author maintain steady suspense, but she delivers more than thrills, probing potent themes of grief, classism, and the slippery nature of memory. Readers will be eager to see what Raphael does next. Agent: Danya Kukafka, Trellis Literary. (May)