MYSTERY WITHIN MYSTERY
I did not read this book. I lived this book.
All These Beautiful Strangers is an incredibly complex and layered mystery about what happened to two people – 1) a boy named Jake Griffin and 2) the main character Charlotte’s mother. The story follows Charlotte in a private school for rich and entitled kids, as she is recruited for a secret society and as she deals with all the every day dramas of school life and trying to find answers to her questions.
I loved that there were 2 timelines. One is now, when Charlotte is at school, and one if years back when her parents were young, and everything that happened back then. There’s a lot of drama, a lot of relationships, in the past and present, and as the reader, you discover tiny little things with every next chapter. I have to say, I haven’t been this emotionally invested in all the characters in a book in some time. Usually you just get invested in a couple, but… well, I just fell in a rabbit hole that had no end. I couldn’t put the book down until I knew EXACTLY what happened. Until the end.
The answers were satisfactory and not too surprising, but I loved what Charlotte did at the end. Since I’ve been reading a lot of dark academia in the past, I was looking for a book that gave me some hope, where not everything was meaningless. This is that book. This is the happy ending I needed. Not because it’s happy… well, it’s not. Everything still sucks, but there’s light with the dark. We have to remember that as dark as human beings can be, we can have as much light in us. And I was extremely impressed with the depths of these characters – each one had bright moments and black moments. It was truly a story of moral greyness, of real people, mistakes and secrets, love and loss, murder… Everything.
I can’t explain how full I feel after reading this story. After following this morally ambiguous person in a sea of greyness, but with flashes of hope and light… and yes, there were a lot of moments that made me angry and sad, but that is the richness of the story and the skill of the author – I believed every single word, to the point that I felt like I was in that world. I was not myself. This is one of those books that, if I started it one day and I had to work the same day, I would call in sick to finish it. It’s a kind of reading fever that takes over your brain and only lessens when you have read The End.
Truly, this is one of my favorite reads this year. If you like dark academia, snooty students, murder mysteries, a main character you’ll love and hate, so many relationships that will make your head – and your heart – spin, and an overall story that will make you cry and scream and laugh… this is your book. I did not expect so much when I dove into this, but came out with everything. Maybe this is too much gushing for a book review, but I stand by it. This book is WHY I read books.
Nothing short of 5 stars will do for this book. Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Violeta Nedkova
