I was enthralled and moved in a deeply disturbing way by Sophie’s gripping, powerful debut about a lesbian couple who were planning their family future of children and lazy weekends when one night everything turns increasingly dark and suffocating, finding ourselves in an intense and emotional situation that seems surreal, impossible, and unexplainable in the simplest scientific forms, but works extremely well in a very believable and horrendous way.
This, however, felt very bland, stale, and I wondered where her hypnotic and gnashing hand went-had it gotten lost in the pressure of a follow up? Or was it a talented but lost hand gotten lucky in a wonderfully strange idea alongside writing that digested sourly wonderful?
This second attempt is not only tasteless and at times dragging in a way that doesn’t create building atmosphere in the more quieter of moments, but also seemed backwards against her shocking but surprisingly soft slim packet of a debut.
I found myself skimming and not deeply invested like I was with her debut.
I will add that some reviews say that when this book goes dark and intense it goes too far, I think the violence and trauma was handled quite well and the most shocking of scenes were written in a way that were starkly bold and dangerous, but also handled with a lot of care and importance.
I didn’t feel the violence was just added in for a spicy flavour, I felt it worked well among all the chunky prose that just didn’t work for me.

I loved The Schoolhouse by Sophie Ward. The story follows two characters, in two different timelines, present day and 1975, and concerns a missing girl, and a traumatic incident in the past, both of which are connected. The plot was intricate, clever and fast moving, the characters complex and believable, and the mystery was intriguing. Brilliant.

The Schoolhouse by Sophie Ward is set in the past and the present involving cases of missing children.

Sophie Ward’s debut novel was the outstanding “Love and Other Thought Experiments” – longlisted (but disappointingly not shortlisted) for the 2020 Booker Prize – it was an original, entertaining and rather unique blend of novelisation of philosophical thought experiment, science fiction and a family tale about love and grief over the loss of others. The publisher compared it - for its synthesis of fiction and philosophy - to the young adult bestseller “Sophie’s World”.

This her second novel is a rather more conventional blend of a revenge thriller, a police procedural and a young adult diary set in an experimental school in the 1970s, (both of which involve missing girls) with an overarching theme of guilt and grief over one’s own actions. I might compare it to Sophie Mackenzie’s YA novel “Girl, Missing”.

The book has three main elements to it – two set in 1990 and one in 1975.

In 1990 a deaf girl Isobel, working in a University library spots two 9-10 year old girls (whose presence there is incongruous) having a whispered conversation. But her whole attention is focused on a letter she receives from an old school teacher which brings the horrors of her past back into present day focus as she finds that a man has been released from jail.

Also in 1990, a Detective Sergeant Sally Carter – is called in to investigate the disappearance of a 10 year old girl from a primary school. Suspicion is immediately focused on the parents and on local registered paedophiles – but Carter also thinks the headmaster may be hiding something he knows or suspects.

In 1975 we read the diary Isobel wrote when she started at a new school – an experimental school (similar it seems to one the author attended) with a mix of pupils – some handicapped, and some like Isobel with parents who want their children to have a freer and less conventional education.

The stories initially link when Isobel comes forwards a potential witness – albeit no one else in the library appears to have seen the children (one of whom she claims looks like the missing girl) and who she saw the day after that girl went missing.

The storylines further link when Isobel herself and those close to her are subject to violence – seemingly related to the man released from jail and to the mystery of what happened 15 years ago and lead to Isobel’s deafness and also her guilt about the part she played in not preventing a tragedy. There is also a rather gratuitous additional coincidental link which emerges over time with a link to what Isobel was involved in, in 1975, and Carter’s first ever missing child case as well as with hints of Carter’s own troubled childhood which means both the 1975 and 1990 cases resonate with her.

Isobel’s 1990 storyline seemed to introduce rather gratuitous amounts of drama and violence in what seemed an attempt to graft a thriller onto a police procedural. That police procedural interested me as much as any other book from that genre – i.e not really at all – and was additionally hampered by some rather odd breakthroughs by the detective and further some key elements of the eventual resolution of the disappearance seemed to me to make no sense. And I found the diary sections particularly uninteresting – they read like a 9 year old’s diary but I do not really want to read a 9 year old’s level of literary ability. And the early letter rather removed for me much of the tension as to what happens – I simply found myself flicking through the entries looking for when the various people mentioned in the letter appeared.

I feel like the review has been very negative. I do congratulate the author on writing something very different – too many authors, literary fiction authors as much as genre authors, largely write and rewrite the same book (see for example the latest novels of Douglas Stuart, Jennifer Egan, Ali Smith – three of my very favourite authors). But my disappointment is entirely driven at my love of “Love and “ – and my own thought experiment which had imagined that her second novel – even if very different – would share the freshness of the first, whereas this feels like a pretty standard genre novel.

For personal taste - 2.5 rounded up

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK for an ARC via NetGalley

I read this one because I have loved the author's Love and Other Experiments. But this really should come with a 'if you loved Love and Other Experiments - then probably best to pass on this one" blurb as it is aiming for a completely different audience as a conventional genre police procedural / mystery in a YA style.

And I don't really feel able to fairly comment on its merits in that regard as it simply isn't a genre I appreciate.

But perhaps one for fans of Holly Jackson or Karen M. McManus.

This was a slow burn read but I think it was better for it. It is tense and atmospheric and I loved the dusl timeline in the book. I really enjoyed it and will be looking for more from the author

The Schoolhouse is set in the dual timelines of 1975 and 1990. In 1975 we follow Isobel, a 10 year old girl who is studying at The Schoolhouse, a school in london which is somewhat unconventional, something terrible happens to Isobel and she leaves the school abruptly.

15 years later, a 10 year old girl is reported missing after never returning home from school... the last witness to see her alive, was Isobel.

The story flits between timelines and perspectives showing how the two seemingly separate stories intertwine. It was gripping and fast paced whilst also being beautifully written and heartbreaking in parts.

It was a hard read in parts as it covered some tough topics - but I loved it. A tale of childhood innocence and how quickly it can be torn away.

The premise of this book was really intriguing, but it failed in the execution a bit. I found it hard to follow as it jumped between Isobel's and Carter's viewpoints. There were also 2 different crimes involved and they never quite matched up.

I did find the storyline involving the experimental school to be interesting, but I think it might have been more compelling if there had been more detail about the school and Isobel's childhood. It ended up being kind of vague.

And there were a bit too many plotlines, with the disappearance of Caitlin, the incident at the school and an extraneous story involving a love interest for Isobel.

I received an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review

Slow burn, psychological, police procedural/whodunit/Bildungsroman. Isobel was a wonderful protagonist to get to know. Definitely solid world building here. An unexpected fresh pleasure

On an objective, intellectual level this just shouldn't have worked for me: two stories are mashed up together with only the most tenuous of links between them; the narrative splits into various different strands following Isobel 'now' as a lurid past comes back to haunt her; Isobel 'then' as a teenager whose diary we're reading; and a female police officer investigating a missing teenager 'now' whose story is rather laboriously and coincidentally crammed into that of Isobel. And yet...

And yet, despite all the qualms in my head, on an emotional level this book really managed to squirm under my skin, something I can only attribute to the powerful writing of Ward. I can easily tick off on my fingers all the elements that just shouldn't work: too much plot, too many stories, too many horses, too much sensational violence - but on a visceral level this got to me!