Jane Milton returns to her former boarding school, but not in happy mood. It is her last chance to survive. Financially in a dire position, she only got the post of an English teacher due to a friend’s interference. With the return to Grove Academy old memories arise a new, dark ones, which had been buried for 30 years never to pop up again. When she meets clever Kat in her class, her own time as a pupil seems to repeat itself and a long hidden manuscript might reveal more secrets than the ones which lead them to dispair so long ago.

Nora Carroll’s novel is an interesting mixture of a grown-up woman who had high hopes and fell down deeply and a set of girls on the threshold to adulthood fighting between loyalty and dreams. The shift between the two time settings make it a vivid story where both plots are interestingsly interwoven and mysteries hidden in the connection. It is not a typical coming-of age or boarding school novel, it offers much more to detect and gives a lot of food for thought. Additionally, I liked Nora Carroll’s way of inserting poetry into the plot, which also reflects in her own use of language.