Suspense

At a time when Hollywood stars are bribing the way for their offspring to attend prestigious colleges, the over-the-top antics of teachers, parents, and students at the elite Belmont Academy are nearly credible. While told from multiple points of view, the novel centers around the deeply disturbed Teddy Crutcher, Belmont’s reigning teacher of the year, and Zach, the only reliable narrator, whose straight-A record is in jeopardy thanks to Crutcher. Harkening back to mysteries of the Golden Age, the Belmont community’s weapon of choice is poison—successful, providing it reaches the right recipient. There’s lots to appreciate in this absolutely delicious book, and Zach’s painful conversations with his arrogant, self-obsessed, and Ivy-focused parents are a tour de force. Teen readers suffering through the admissions process will also enjoy this novel. By the author of the much appreciated My Lovely Wife.

Broke NYU student Trevor eats ramen noodles while his dorm neighbor Claudia, famously the daughter of a music producer, is more about the expensive Japanese restaurant down the street. But they’re thrown together when Claudia is assaulted. Claudia’s body tells her that the hours missing from her memory of the drunken night before included violent sex; physical hints aren’t necessary when her abuser posts a video of her rape. Dahl presents Claudia’s ordeal as both horrifyingly mundane—the campus health center has a well-worn rape protocol, and she’s forced to go through the bleak motions—and engagingly suspenseful. The young woman’s family seeks to save her and find the truth, while another rich kid’s family is battling to hide it. Since the details of the rape are unclear to Claudia, and the video is only briefly described, Dahl mainly focuses on the aftermath of the attack, sparing readers a detailed rape scene. What they get instead is a close look at the physical and mental torture of absorbing an attack; the ways in which kindness can be a salve yet a crushing contrast with hurt; and, most of all, a lesson that redemption is owed to every victim.