Review: Where Sleeping Girls Lie by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
Title: Where Sleeping Girls Lie
Author: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
Published: 19th March 2024
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Age: YA
What’s it About?
Sade is the new girl at the prestigious Alfred Nobel Academy, an exclusive boarding school filled with the teenage progeny of the elite and powerful. Her roommate and house sister Elizabeth shows Sade around and helps her settle in, but that very night, Elizabeth vanishes without a trace. Only Sade and Elizabeth's best friend Baz seem to care what happened to her and as they begin to investigate they find links to the school's mysterious traditions and secrets, and the trio of popular girls who rule the school: known to all as The Unholy Trinity.
Soon Sade and Baz are caught up in a swirling maelstrom of events as they try to discover the truth, but Sade is keeping secrets of her own that might just be linked to Elizabeth's disappearance, and the reason why Sade joined this secretive school in the first place.
“It’s okay, it happened a while ago,” Sade said simply, as though she were stating something mundane and reasonable.
There was nothing mundane or reasonable about death.
Opinions:
Important: Significant, serious trigger warnings apply to this book. Check out the content warnings page on The Storygraph for details.
I have mixed feelings about Where Sleeping Girls Lie. I really loved Ace of Spaces, the author's previous and first book, and had high hopes going into this one. Both books even have a vaguely similar premise, both following young Black protagonists joining prestigious and old-fashioned schools filled by majority white students and staff. However, I found Where Sleeping Girls Lie somewhat messier and less cohesive than its predecessor.
Starting out with the good, I loved the two main protagonists. Sade and Baz both felt like interesting characters who I could root for from the beginning, with vibrant personalities that shone out from the page and secrets that made me want to learn more. I wanted to be friends with Baz from the moment I met him, and Persephone - one of the Unholy Trinity who becomes a key player in the story - was a refreshing change from the usual spoiled, rich mean girl who usually inhabits the "popular girls" clique. Even many of the minor characters like Jessica the house prefect and Miss Blackburn the strict school mistress felt like engaging characters with their own personalities and stories. I also appreciated the LGBTQ threads that were woven throughout the story and treated exactly the same as the straight relationships.
That was the problem with love. It created blind spots in your mind. Blood-red flags were blocked out by high levels of dopamine and the trick of a gentlemanly smile.
However, none of that stopped the story itself from feeling messy. At over 400 pages this is a chunky book for a YA contemporary, and it felt every page of it too. I personally think it could have used a harsh trim from an enthusiastic editor to make it a whole lot more cohesive. There were so many secondary characters I kept losing track of who was who, and several of the subplots just felt as if they distracted me from the main plot and served no other purpose. I also felt let down by several of the big twists and plot reveals. Part of Sade's big secret was obvious right from the start, with an almost comical number of obvious hints being dropped, and another reveal toward the end felt forced to the point of eye roll level serendipity, especially when it seemed entirely unnecessary, too.
Overall, this was a mixed bag of a book. While it has a hugely important message at its heart, I wish it had been brought together in a better way. Many thanks to NetGalley and Usborne Publishing for the ARC.
Rating: 3/5