Mark Vogel is like the older brother Stefan Riley never had, until one day he disappears, and Stefan has to adapt to life without him. But, one year later, when he runs into a girl who looks near-identical to Mark, Stefan becomes obsessed. He discovers that other boys have disappeared, too, dozens over the years, most of them students of the Royal College of Saint Almsworth, many of them troubled or unruly before their disappearance.
What is happening to these boys? Who are the handful of women on campus who bear a striking resemblance to some of those who went missing? And what is the connection to the mysterious Dorley Hall?
Stefan works hard to get into the Royal College for one reason and one reason only: to find out exactly what happened to the women who live at Dorley Hall, and to get it to happen to him, too.
A closeted trans girl attempts to infiltrate a secret underground forced feminisation programme.
Content note: this story engages with some reasonably dark topics, including but not limited to torture, manipulation, dysphoria, nonconsensual surgery, and kidnapping. While it isn’t intended to be a dark or dystopian story, the perspective characters are carrying a lot of baggage, and the exploration of the premise might be triggering for trans readers.
Alyson lives in a very small flat in a very large city, and writes fiction with trans themes and characters. Her Twitter is twitter.com/badambulist
My thoughts: I have a lot to say about this book, many questions (which hopefully the rest of the series will answer) and will need a book club or something to discuss this with.
It is very good, incredibly thought provoking and at times shocking (please check all the trigger warnings before reading). As well as being a clever thriller, it’s a fascinating discussion about gender, misogyny, social norms, and who has the right to carry out justice.
Stefan is looking for his missing friend Mark, including getting into the same university, where he hopes to find answers about what happened. What he finds instead blows his mind. Dorley Hall is not at all what he thought, yet, in a way, it is everything he hoped.
There’s also the residents of the dorms, young women dealing with growing into their own skins, with finding their places in society. The flawed society we live in, where women are judged on their appearance, Aunt Bea, the woman who oversees Dorley Hall has some rather antiquated ideas about feminity and what makes someone feminine.
Honestly it’s a good read, if at times quite challenging and it will definitely leave you with lots of thoughts. But that’s never a bad thing. If you want to talk in detail about it – let me know!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 