Teen thrillers and dramas set in posh boarding schools are being published at an alarming rate and I review them at an alarming rate, however, there are probably few as whacky as Tomi Oyemakinde’s debut The Changing Man. Billed as a ‘speculative thriller’ the final third is totally bizarre and not what I was expecting in the slightest, moving from school drama with racial overtones into full Stranger Things mode. The action starts with teenager Ife joining Nithercott School through its prestigious Urban Achievers Program, which aimed to support poorer but very clever pupils. Ife already feels very different as there is only one other Black girl in her school year and does not feel she is made to feel very welcome. I found some parts of this story hard to believe, not that the privileged might have racist attitudes, but the fact that the kids on the Urban Achievers Program had to wear different school uniforms to single them out as ‘different’. The eye is in the detail and I just do not see this happening in any school and I found this more unbelievable than the wild direction the story takes. I also found all the teachers to be unnecessarily unpleasant, almost like caricatures of stuck-up spinsters, and I struggled with this as they dished out detention after detention or shouted at kids for little reason.

The mystery itself was fast paced and engaging and Ife was a fun character to spend time with. One could feel her anxiety levels increasing as her phone was confiscated and struggles to settle in class with no friends and being unaware how the school ticked. There was one particularly unsettling scene where a teacher pulls her up for having her skirt too short, not realising (or maybe not caring) that the skirt has been rolled up because it was second hand. Soon Ife makes friends with Ben and Bee and she is sucked into the mystery to find Ben’s elder brother who disappeared in the prologue and it takes them to the most unsuspecting places and into the path of a local legend ‘The Changing Man’. The kids were the best part of this story, the Changing Man lacked any fear factor and did not appear in the novel until well into the action. One might wonder why the police did not show more interest in disappearing children, but it does all tie in nicely at the end, leaving things open for a sequel. A nice blend of racial commentary, thriller, boarding school drama and some outlandish plot developments. AGE RANGE 12+