Where Sleeping Girls Lie

Where Sleeping Girls Lie

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 4.5
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In Where Sleeping Girls Lie ― a YA contemporary mystery by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, the New York Times-bestselling author of Ace of Spades ― a girl new to boarding school discovers dark secrets and coverups after her roommate disappears. It’s like I keep stumbling into a dark room, searching for the switch to make things bright again. To make me remember. But the switch isn’t there. Was it there before? Sade Hussein is starting her third year of high school, this time at the prestigious Alfred Nobel Academy boarding school. After being home-schooled all her life and feeling like a magnet for misfortune, she’s not sure what will happen. What she doesn’t expect though is for her roommate Elizabeth to disappear after Sade’s first night. Or for people to think she had something to do with it. With rumors swirling around her, Sade catches the attention of the most popular girls in school – collectively known as the ‘Unholy Trinity’ – and they bring her into their fold. Between learning more about them - especially Persephone, who Sade finds herself drawn to - playing catch-up in class, and trying to figure out what happened to Elizabeth, Sade has a lot on her plate. It doesn’t help that she’s already dealing with grief from the many tragedies in her family. And then a student is found dead. The more Sade investigates, the more she realizes there’s more to Alfred Nobel Academy and its students than she realized. Secrets lurk around every corner and beneath every surface…secrets that rival even her own.


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  • booksgamesvinyl
    Jan 03, 2025
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  • megansschapters
    Mar 09, 2025
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  • skylarkblue1
    Jan 12, 2025
    Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 4.5
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    Graphic: Drug abuse, Suicide, Sexual assault, Rape, and Misogyny Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Child abuse, Death of parent, and Domestic abuse Minor: Animal death Animal death is not of a pet, but it does feel slightly out of place and feels like it's just used to shock.
    Representations: https://trello.com/c/rfNSpnhX/98-where-sleeping-girls-lie-by-faridah-%C3%A0b%C3%ADk%C3%A9-%C3%ADy%C3%ADm%C3%ADd%C3%A9 Thank you to Netgalley for a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review. I did also buy myself a physical copy of the book a couple chapters in as it was up for a bookclub I go to and they had copies already and I prefer to read physical where I can. This book was astonishing. I loved it, but it's not a book you have a lot of fun with. I've yet to read Ace of Spades, it's on my physical TBR and I've just not gotten around to it yet, but reading this has made me really want to read AoS sooner!! This book is exactly like pulling on a loose thread and suddenly the whole sweater unravels. It starts with a missing person mystery and quickly devolves into pulling mystery threads across the entire school. The tension is done delightfully, I think it's supposed to be slow paced but it absolutely read like it was fast paced. I was completely hooked from the first page onwards. The way the book messes directly with the reader is wonderful, the codes and subtle misdirections are wonderful. I'd have loved code breaking to have more of a focus as it seemed like it was going to at first, but it feels pretty underutilized by the end. Also not entirely sure the author knows what an anagram is haha. I loved the characters, they were complex and each got the right amount of attention I think. I did get confused a few times on who people were because there's so many characters but by the end I think I had a decent grasp of who was who (except some of the girls 😅). The ones that are meant to be disliked often had a lot more with them than just "hate this character for this reason", even including some ambiguous characters too which made quite a nice mix of a cast. I honestly can't think of many actual core flaws with this, the only major point is I'm not entirely sure what happened with one of the main plot lines. There was a theory proposed about how it went, but I don't think in the end it was actually confirmed or not. Unless the proposed theory is what happened, pretty believable series of events that fits in well but does feel like we didn't get the full picture of what happened. Just a note for anyone reading the physical UK copy (at least the first edition out) there's a few major typos especially towards the end. It doesn't make it incomprehensible but it is very noticeable.

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