Publisher's Weekly Review
The unique and gripping latest from Kapelke-Dale (The Ingenue) examines tensions among a group of young equestrians. In 2005, scholarship student Rosie Macalister from small-town Western Plains, Ill., is heading back to New Haven, Conn., for her senior year at Yale. When Rosie arrives at the house she shares with four other members of the university's equestrian team, she discovers that she's been assigned a roommate: new recruit Annelise Tattinger. A skilled rider, Annelise's arrival shifts the dynamics in the highly competitive house, causing once unspoken rivalries to rise to the surface. Before the end of the year, one of the teammates dies in a riding incident that's hastily declared an accident. After graduation, Rosie leaves Connecticut for a low-level finance job in New York City, while the remaining members of the team return to their wealthy family homes. Before long, disturbing text messages begin appearing on the young women's phones, casting doubt on both Annelise's true identity and the circumstances of their senior year tragedy. Kapelke-Dale skillfully blends class concerns, character development, and a menacing atmosphere, emerging with an intoxicating mystery that defies easy categorization. Readers will be tempted to devour it in a single sitting. Agent: Sarah Phair, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Feb.)
Booklist Review
Rosie just wants to fit in. After studying abroad her junior year, she eagerly returns to Yale and her housemates (all fellow equestrian teammates), but she's apprehensive to meet transfer student Annelise, who joined the group in her absence. Unlike her wealthy friends, middle-class Rosie has always felt like an outsider. She craves financial security and aspires to the influence and power of best friend Cressida's father, Grayson, whose charitable foundation funded Rosie's childhood riding lessons. Initially dismayed to find that she has to share a room with enigmatic Annelise, Rosie is intrigued by Annelise's excellent riding skill and near cult-leader status as resident tarot card reader. The fivesome launches into their senior year brimming with competitions, rivalries amid friendships, and secrets within lies, building to a shocking event overshadowing their final semester. Following graduation, Rosie's job working for Grayson reveals the darker side of the wealth she thought she needed as she searches for the "right questions" and whether she wants them answered. Fans of Kapelke-Dale's (The Ingenue, 2022) signature twisty suspense will be riveted.
Library Journal Review
Kapelke-Dale (The Ingenue) captures the cutthroat nature of collegiate equestrian competition and the complicated female friendships formed around them in her latest. She perfectly portrays the complexities of class and status among privileged peers, where wealth outweighs talent and ambition spawns cruelty. Rosie Macalister is on financial aid at attends Yale, unbeknownst to her rich housemates. When she returns for senior year after studying in Argentina, she discovers that a new person has been welcomed into her elite friend group: Annelise Tattinger. Annelise is as mysterious--and rich--as she is talented on horseback. When the queen bee of their group discovers her bank account is short $20,000, a shadow of suspicion falls on the newest member of their circle. Accusations, assumptions, and ambition come to a head with deadly consequences as, one by one, the girls turn on each other. Tarot readings are woven throughout the narrative, and the cards' subtle (and not so subtle) interpretations become a source of wonder and suspense as they reveal how luck, fortune, and identity are often projections of desires and secret longing. VERDICT Sophisticated with just the right dose of sinister, this coming-of-age story doesn't shy from the grisly power dynamics of privilege.--Alana R. Quarles
