Are you in the market for a chiller that will keep you in suspense from beginning to end for Christmas vacation? If so, have I got a book for you! Rebecca Barrow's The Tournament is a prime example of the genre private schools can be the death of you.
Well, first of all there's the school itself. The Gardner-Bahnsen School for Girls was founded close to the turn of the 20th century by two rather unusual women who believed that girls should be educated to not only be fluent in the classics and sciences, but able to survive anywhere. And I mean anywhere. In addition to physics and history the students have classes that could have been planned by today's extreme survivalists.
Then there's the major event of each year, a competition called the Tierney Cup, a competition that practically screams 😱 danger, peril, legal liability! Something no school administrator in their right mind would sign off on. Seven about to graduate seniors are chosen as competitors. The one who scores the most points in a series of contests wins. They involve stuff like a five mile ocean swim (against perilous currents), slaughtering and butchering wild animals, and staying on an island overnight alone.
Then there's the book's three narrators. Max is a scholarship student uncomfortably aware of her poverty in relation to her classmates. Raised in a bleak, poor community from which hardly anyone escapes, she made up her mind to be the exception. Applying on her own, she didn't clue her parents in until she was accepted with a hefty scholarship. This past summer has been the first vacation she hasn't spent with the family of...
...Nora, her roommate and bestie of six years, Nora who has lived in flamboyant Max's shadow. Who has been content to do so...
...until at the end of their junior year she confessed to Max that she wanted to be more than just friends. Now there's serious bad blood between the formerly inseparable chums.
Rounding out the trio is Teddy the bad girl who has been expelled from three other private boarding schools. She never means to start trouble. She tries to be good. But she feels this force within her that gets bored and won't let up until she's in real hot water. This is her last chance school. She was only admitted as a legacy. Her grandmother was a Gardner girl.
...Teddy has become intimate with Nora but cheats on her with Max when a blizzard unfortunately strands her at school...
...There are extremely bad feelings all around. These are three girls you wouldn't want together in the same room...
...never mind in a cutthroat competition with access to deadly weapons...
...Will they and the other contestants all get out alive?
Like Stephen King's finest works, The Tournament relies on the intimate portrayal of the evil that can lurk in the human heart and the havoc it can create.
On a purrrsonal note, that book was a joy to read and review. If you're a chiller affecianado don't miss out. I've embarked on one of my long term favorite 😍 winter traditions. From when the beautiful tree is up and decorated until it's gone when the big ass TV isn't on I spend as much time as I can lying on the sofa reading. I've observed this for decades and it always is a joyful practice--a temporary mitigation of winter's darkness and bitter cold. Speaking of which--today is not supposed to even hit freezing. With nowhere compelling to go you'd better believe I'm staying in.
A great big shout out goes out to the librarians keeping me supplied with great books 📚 to read and review and the students embarking on finals week.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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