Deadly Little Lessons
by Danielle Valentine
My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA thriller
When Lia Michaels’s foster mom first suggests that Lia start attending Luminary Prep for senior year, she doesn’t agree right away. But she starts to think that maybe the new, experimental school could help with her dream to go to college and get a job she actually likes, both of which are long shots with her juvenile record and poor grades. It’s not long into the first semester, though, before things start to feel off. There are thick walls around the campus and parents aren’t allowed in; her first class features an obstacle course that is lacking in safety features. And then there’s the assembly where they’re told that only 5 of the 50 students attending the school will graduate. Lia is determined to be one of those 5, but when the students that fail out start to disappear under suspicious circumstances, her hope to graduate turns into a need to simply survive.
I don’t know why I keep reading these YA thrillers. They always promise much and deliver little. This one at least gets 3 stars, which is more than most from me, and that’s mostly due to my interest in the mystery about the school. I hoped for some kind of unexpected, dark secret behind the school, and in a way that is what it turned out to be. However, a couple of mysterious elements that are presented early in Lia’s time in the school do not have as satisfactory or exciting of resolutions as I would have liked. And I would have felt more suspense and even emotion from the kids disappearing one by one (or sometimes in larger numbers) if Lia and her friends hadn’t seemed mostly protected through much of the book. The question about what was happening was always in her mind, but it lacked urgency for a while and thus lacked urgency for me too.
It is when the urgency really picks up that a physical attraction starts between Lia and another student, and I really couldn’t have cared less about any of that. It was too physical too quickly for my preference and, in fact, could have been a romance I enjoyed if the author had let the interactions between them stand without throwing in the hormones. Lia herself is a character I could not connect with on really any level, and all of the other characters—from her foster sister to not one, but two, romantic interests—were all weak and underdeveloped. In the climax of the book, a statement uttered by the villain made me think the story was going to go a whole different way, and I was actually really excited about the possibility. But that was my bad, because no, it was really closer to what it was built up to be the entire time after all.
Overall, the unique mystery behind the school kept me turning pages, but the underdeveloped characters and shoehorned romance dragged it down. It’s a decent option if you’re not bothered by the aspects of the book that I mentioned above.
I received an advanced review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
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