I wish the twist occurred sooner, and we got to spend more time acclimating to the new reality of the situation. After the twist, those potential faults are explained away, but I honestly don’t know if I like it any better.

Most of the book, and it’s not a short book, is rather dull. Up until that twist, I felt like The Tenth Girl was really dragging, lacking in character development, and uninventive with its plot. One of the biggest twists I have ever experienced in a book (perhaps even bigger than Gone Girl), occurs with only a fourth of the narrative to go, and from there on out it completely defies genre and expectations. If it seems like I’m being cagey here with details, it’s because everything I thought I knew about this book through 3/4ths of it is a lie. The only way to quell The Others, as these destructive spirits are called, is to sacrifice a young girl.

These forces seem linked to an old indigenous Zapuche ( mapuche) legend, where the tribes attempted to protect themselves and their lands by inviting back the spirits of their departed, but instead opened the floodgates of hell. Through a series of events, Angel’s spirit finds itself at the very same boarding school as Mavi, and she soon learns that other spirits are hunting and feeding from the residents of the school.Īngel and Mavi make an unlikely connection but strong, and together they decide to fight the seemingly paranormal forces bent on destroying everyone and everything around them. I can’t even truly review it because I don’t want to spoil anything!Ī split perspective narrative, The Tenth Girl bounces back and forth between Mavi, a young woman in 1970s Argentina beginning work as an English teacher at a secluded prestigious boarding school in Patagonia (such a stunning place on this earth), and Angel, an American teen in the 21st century (I think) suffering from the loss of her family. In my wildest dreams, I could never have predicted what happens at about 80% of the way through. This book is a slow burn that ends in the most unexpected way. I say with no exaggeration that Sara Faring’s The Tenth Girl contains the biggest twist and flip I have ever witnessed in fiction.

The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring