Elin is back! And I love it.
Edit: Yes! It is part of a series!
#1 bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand teams up with her daughter, Shelby Cunningham, to deliver a dishy, page-turning novel following an intertwined cast of characters over the course of one drama-filled year at a New England boarding school. (Goodreads blurb)
This is an easy, five stars for me.
There, that’s my review.
In all honesty, I do think this is such a great book. I love the way it’s broken up into months and how the chapters are organized visually. I love all the different points of views. I love that it’s not just student drama, but teacher drama. Helps take it out of a full YA (although let’s not get too crazy that this is serious at all). I think that was very clever of the two authors to do as you aren’t pigeonholing your readers.
I love the variety of topics they cover. And then to have such a variety of characters and topics and issues and plot lines, but it never feels too much. It also all feels very connected and woven together. Stories aren’t kicking out of the main plot to do its own thing.
All I can say really is that this is an excellent boarding school story about life. There isn’t some mystery you have to solve, there isn’t some big climax you’re waiting to happen … it’s just life.
I will say there are some loose ends, which is a little disappointing. I hope this is the first book of a series? I should look into that.
Other reviewers who mentioned that this is like a young adult Secret History I would highly disagree with. Obviously we’re hitting on a genre of boarding school stories. But you can’t touch A Secret History. That story is dark and mysterious, and more than just a boarding school story in the ‘boarding school’ genre (is that a real genre?) Not to say that The Academy is any less because of it’s lack of connection to The Secret History, I just feel as a lover of The Secret History it’s a little offensive to try to say they are at all the same. (ha)
So that’s my soap box.
I will step down and hope that either you’ve already read it, or you plan on picking it up. I just saw a headline saying this is already going to be made into a TV series. Although I’d like a second book to be written without the pressure of knowing it could be brought into a TV series, it’s all very exciting. It seems to be trending with some book-influencers, but Goodreads rating isn’t the best…
Curious your thoughts! Email me or let me know in the comments below!
Stats: 432 pages – First published September 16, 2025
cmacs paperbacks 
Leave a comment