I really enjoyed this YA dark academia book. Set in Ireland, Jasmin is in the final year at school, feeling like an outcast, but then gets involved with a group of new older friends who are at university. There is a murder that they work together to solve, and the story pulls us through twists and turns as they try to find out what happened. I liked the character of Jasmin - she is easy to warm to, and her responses and family dynamic seem authentic to someone of her age. The ending wasn’t predictable, and there was a good amount of drama throughout. It was a tad long for me - I’m not a fan of the slow burn and I could have done with it picking up the pace. But that doesn’t take away from the great story, and it has full potential for a sequel.

Strange Nature is a slow-burn thriller that follows Jasmin, her traumatic past, and her new group of friends as they try to uncover a murder.

I was excited to pick this up, but the beginning felt incredibly slow for me. The pacing made it hard to stay engaged, and not everything early on seemed to contribute meaningfully to character growth. I only started to feel truly invested around the 70% mark, and from there I finished it quickly. Until then, I felt it dragged a lot.

The story is told in deep third-person POV. Even though I read an ARC/uncorrected proof, I thought it worked really well for the narrative. It’s clear how Jasmin sees and feels about the people around her. But aside from one obvious exception, the rest of the group blurred together a bit, and I found it hard to remember what made each of them stand out. Jasmin’s family dynamics, on the other hand, were more intriguing and held my interest. The initial hook tied to her trauma was what really kept me going.

There’s also a slightly overplayed supernatural vibe at times. I didn’t expect it to be fantasy, but certain moments made me wonder if it might go that way. It doesn’t, though, and for some readers, that might feel a little misleading.

I liked the final twists, and overall it was a decent read. But I didn’t fall in love with it, mostly because the slow pacing and group dynamics didn’t give me the kind of emotional connection I usually look for.

If you're into slow-burn thrillers with a dark academia vibe, this might be the perfect read for you.

STRANGE NATURE is a murder mystery with lots of avenues of investigation.

This is a twisty murder mystery about students at a university caught up in the orbit of a charismatic leader and the different ways students can be dismissed. There are so many suspect all with ties back to this professor and it feels like he must be involved but he seems insulated from it by them. Trying to find that connective thread kept me turning the pages.

The number of suspects was also compelling, providing Jasmin and her friends several avenues to go down, all these chances to stumble across what they needed. But there are friendship tensions and witnesses too scared to come clean making their job harder. There are so many turns and reveals and discoveries of other issues that makes it such a nice mystery to sink your teeth in.

I thought, initially, that this book was a contemporary fantasy - based on both this cover looking very SFF and Mary Watson's previous work. However, despite the characters referring to legends, this is very much a thriller without any fantastical elements. I kept expecting there to be some ritualistic element to the killing or some belief in magic that was propelling them along, but that never turned up, and it took me a while to get used to this idea.

I really got into this dark academia mystery from the very first page. The story plunges you right alongside the main character, who is herself a bit of a puzzle—carrying the weight of past traumas that make her reluctant to open up. Her history doesn’t just stay in the past; it weaves itself into her present reality, influencing the way she interacts with new friends and how she approaches the tangled mystery of a suspicious death on campus.

What I loved was how unpredictable the story became. Every new revelation made me question who I could trust, and the shifting alliances kept the tension high. The atmosphere perfectly captures that classic dark academia feel—intense, brooding, and intellectually charged—while also delivering the kind of twists and turns that make you think of a high-stakes mystery like A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. It balances a smart, layered plot with emotional depth and character complexity.

Overall, this isn’t just a typical campus whodunit. It’s a well-crafted tale of secrets, friendship, and betrayal that kept me hooked until the very last page.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC!

17-year-old Jasmin spends her time hanging around the local university, where her grandfather once taught before he was sent to prison for a terrible crime. After a talk by famous scientist Theo Merrick, a student is found dead. Jasmin joins forces with a group of journalism students to find out what happened—but everyone is hiding secrets, and Jasmin’s own dark family history keeps coming back to haunt her.


Our protagonist, Jasmin, feels just like a real 17/18-year-old, with her desire to fit in, her anxieties, her impulsiveness. She’s likeable, but at the same time, has flaws. The idea of her as a ‘watcher’ was really interesting, and I enjoyed seeing her develop from passive witness, to investigator, to an active decision-maker.

Jasmin’s relationship with the four older students she becomes obsessed with is deliciously complicated. She’s lying to them, but it’s also clear that they’re lying to her, and even though at points they clearly do all get on well, there is an undercurrent of tension throughout. It’s complex, just like relationships are, and a neat display of the dangers of hero-worshipping real, complicated people.

Her relationship with her family is a nice contrast to this, and it’s nice to read a YA book where the protagonist does have a support system.

The plot is engaging and fast-paced. There are so many suspects for the murder, so many red herrings, and throughout it all, subtle hints at something not quite natural going on.

Overall, a twisting dark academia thriller I found hard to put down!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for approving me to read this book, I’m rating it 4 stars.

I liked this dark academia mystery, it jumps right in with our main character who is a mystery to herself in a way with monsters from the past keeping her a closed book. Her past seems to bleed into the present as she makes new friends and follows clues to figure out a mysterious death. The story takes unexpected turns, you cannot trust anyone.

This felt like an academic setting scooby doo/A good girls guide to murder type scenario and I mean that in the best way.

An academic thriller where a school girl Jasmin with a compulsion to know the answers, finds herself working with the university students she has admired from a distance to solve a murder.

Jasmin is a clever and determined character who whilst is still struggling with traumas of her past is not willing to let another life be lost and forgotten. Especially when she is worried an encounter the same day as the Murder may have been what triggered it all.

This is not just a story of a group of friends trying to solve a murder mystery but it is a story of growing up, complex friendships and the impact of past trauma. As the group work through their murder board and suspects their list of possibilities is growing and they uncover something much worse than the death of one student on campus.

It becomes a race against time to solve the murder and get the evidence needed before anyone else gets hurt. But lies always come out and they are not always forgivable….

This is not a fast paced thriller but you know that from the blurb going in, but with this story line it works. The risk is heightened as the book goes on and the pace picks up at the times you need it to building your emotions in the right places to be impacted by what is happening. The characters are unique in their own way but each bring something different to
the table.

Unexpected twists and turns make you want to consider your own Murder Board to work alongside the sleuth student detectives to pull together all the clues.

If you like academic thrillers, complex murder mysteries that expand into much more than just X murdered Y then I think you will enjoy this book. I was pleasantly surprised to also see a character with the same name as me in the book - granted it was a tall lanky male and not a short female like me but when you have an unusual name this almost never happens!

I am glad I picked this up and I hope there will be more books in the future around some of the characters in this book (Jasmin, Dash, Imogen, Javier)

Strange Nature pulled me in from the very beginning with its quietly compelling atmosphere and nuanced character introductions. The romance is refreshingly subtle—thoughtful and resonant, capturing the hesitance and intensity of being eighteen without melodrama. Mary Watson navigates darker emotional terrain with skill, weaving in shadowy undercurrents and unexpected twists from early on. It’s a story that feels simultaneously intimate and unsettling.

The writing itself is fluid and accessible, with moments of poetic reflection, especially when dealing with trauma, memory, and trust. I particularly appreciated the exploration of family and sibling dynamics—it’s handled with a light, compassionate touch that still lands with emotional weight. A standout moment for me was when Jasmin’s new group of friends encourage her to try out her magical intuition; it’s a short but potent scene that hints at the novel’s deeper themes.

While the setting—a vaguely outlined Irish college—could have been more distinct, this intentional vagueness doesn’t detract too much from the story’s pull. That said, some readers might find the pacing slow, particularly around Jasmin’s investigation, which sometimes overshadows more compelling narrative threads like her family history. Still, this blend of YA and adult sensibilities—dark academia meets psychological realism—makes Strange Nature a thoughtful, layered read. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from Watson.

Mary Watson - Strange Nature
I am a big fan of Mary Watson, with two of her novels The Wren Hunt (2018) and Blood to Poison (2022) both featuring in my own YA Horror 400 almanac. Hailing from South Africa, her fiction has tackled the horrors of Apartheid, and as a resident of Ireland, she has also written fiction with a focus on Irish mythology. Her latest Strange Nature is most definitely in the latter’s camp, being a Dark Academic tale set in an Irish college. Although Strange Nature just about held my attention, I was invested in seeing how things played out, I found it dragged and felt genuine teen readers might struggle with the sluggish pace. Far too much of the story was built around main character, eighteen-year-old Jasmine, investigating the death of another college student she barely knew. There were narrative reasons for this, but it was not enough to build the story around and some of the more interesting stuff (Jasmine’s relationship with her absent grandfather) is kept too far in the background.

Jasmine is in her final year at school and pretends to go to the local college and befriends a group of students who are a year older than her. They are all too self-obsessed to ask what she is studying and accept her into their friendship circle, none of these older students were particularly interesting and the power of the novel is restricted by the blandness of the characters. In the opening of the story, when Jasmine is a little girl, her lecturer grandfather tries to strangle her grandmother, and how this connects to the main story was more engaging, but it was pretty obvious where the story was heading. Strange Nature was a decent story but it lacked bang and is aimed at older teens who have slightly more patience. AGE RANGE 14+

Jasmin witnessed a traumatic incident when she was little.
Now a late teen, she is curious about mysterious deaths.
The story unfolds through the vehicles of the trauma, and an academic setting, and there are some interesting twists.
Overall, this was a solid 3 star read.

The cover piqued my interest. Then once I started reading it I couldn't stop, loved everything about this book.

I found this engaging from the very beginning. Loved the character introductions, without giving too much away at once.
The romance is polite and subtle which I feel carries a lot of weight very well - we all know what it was like at 18 years old!
I also really enjoyed how dark this got, and even hinted at themes even darker. Again this happens from the start and then manifests in different ways with twists and turns which are very enjoyable, The writing is very accessible and I found myself racing through it at times.

It uses the common YA tropes well without over labouring a moment and without repetitiveness. I do read quite a lot of YA and this felt like midway between YA and adult which I think many younger readers (who are a bit older in that bracket) will appreciate. It is almost academic, and poetic, in its approach to some themes.

There's a wonderful moment when Jasmin's group of newly met 'friends' invite her to try out her own magical intuition. It's a really short scene but it sets up what happens throughout incredibly well. I loved it.

The exploration of family and sibling relations is compassionate and appreciates the limits imposed on a young person's development when something traumatic happens during childhood. The work that the person then needs to do, to shake the burden, the ingrained memories, to find the joy, and to trust. I thought this was played out really well, and again with a really nice light touch.

My one reservation and I'm not sure how important this is in the scheme of things as I do something similar as a writer - the sense of place isn't very clear. I got a good sense of the houses, the rooms, the university but I did not clock it was set in Ireland! I initially thought it was set in the US - somewhere Southern or on the line. This was obviously a clear choice by the writer for the overall setting to be vague but occasionally a name would be dropped and I'd remember this was set across the water close by.

I would certainly like to read more from this author.

I will be sharing this book on my Bluesky account shortly.

Strange Nature by Mary Watson is a great, loving story. Loved this storyline and the characters were immaculate. So so good! 5 stars from me.