Book Review: The Boarding School Experiment - Emily Evans

Review: The Boarding School Experiment - Book #1 Experiment Series - Emily Evans - September 2012

There's a particular kind of joy in curling up with a new Emily Evans book, and I'll admit I went into this one already grinning before I'd even cracked the spine. Emily is one of those authors whose name on a cover is basically a promise.  I know I'm in for something fun, fast, and full of heart and pair that with a boarding school setting, my absolute weakness as a reader, and this felt like it was written just for me.

The premise had me hooked immediately. There are three steps to taking revenge on the most popular, hottest guy in your senior class: stealth, planning, and execution. Poor Elena manages precisely none of them, and instead of getting her satisfying payback, she ends up shipped off to a government-run boarding school out in the wilds of Alaska. And because the universe has a sense of humour, Thane Trallwyn  her sworn enemy and the very target of her failed revenge plot  gets sent along with her. Alaska, it turns out, is not nearly big enough for the two of them.

Now, a little confession from my cosy reading nook: I actually read Book #2 in this world before circling back to this one, so I already had a soft spot for these characters and knew roughly where some threads would lead. Coming back to this book, quite a bit of the plot overlapped with what carries into Book #2, so there was less "new" territory for me than I expected. It didn't ruin my enjoyment, but it did soften some of the surprise that I think a reader coming to the series in order would get to feel first-hand.

That said, Emily Evans still delivers her signature blend of banter, tension, and slow-burn frustration-turned-something-more that makes these enemies-to-something stories so moreish. The Alaska setting adds a lovely, isolated pressure-cooker feel to the whole thing , nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, just two stubborn teenagers forced to face each other.

A solid, cosy, curl-up-on-the-sofa read  just maybe go in order with this series if you can, so all the twists land fresh for you the way they're meant to.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4xGhllm