Spoiled Milk

by Avery Curran

The untimely death of a student at a girls’ boarding school sparks a haunting series of escalating supernatural events.

In 1928, Emily Locke’s final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls is derailed when Violet, the school’s brightest star (and a cunning beauty for whom Emily would do anything), falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: Violet’s death was no accident. There’s an obvious culprit, the French schoolmistress with whom Violet was getting a little too close—they only need to prove it.

Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet’s spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun.

Something deadly is infecting Briarley. It starts with rotten food and curdled milk and quickly grows more threatening. As the body count rises, Emily confronts the fatal forces poisoning the school, but if she is to survive, she must reevaluate everything she knows about Violet, Evelyn, Briarley and, ultimately, herself.

A thrilling debut novel about teenage repression, queer desire and the everyday horror of coming of age.

Genres: Horror, Queer, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Dark Academia, LGBT, Gothic

336 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 2026

About the author

Avery Curran studied History at university, where she first became interested in spiritualism. She finished an MA in Victorian Studies in 2021, and is now midway through a PhD on spiritualism and queerness in the nineteenth century. She was born in New York City and currently lives in London with her girlfriend and their cat.

Reviews

[emma]

i love to judge a book by its cover

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)

[Sidney · Rating 3 out of 5]

on one hand I do think Spoiled Milk is a solid debut, on the other it did kind of end up missing the mark for me. there's a lot going on in this one that I usually love; supernatural horror, gothic atmosphere, seances, mysterious murders/deaths...

I liked the idea of an all girls boarding school but to be honest, most of the characters were just...annoying. it doesn't help that it's told in Emily's pov, who just so happens to be the most unlikeable character out of all of them.

I understand this is a gothic novel so I went into it anticipating a slower pace but this has to be one of the slowest gothic books I've read. the first half was well done, it kept my interest & I was excited to see where it was headed. the second half however, just gets repetitive at times, there's a lot of breaking away from the present to info dump on things that really don't matter or fully connect to what's going on in the story that really made it drag so a lot of the build up of tension was lost.

there were definitely some creepy moments here & there but we never really get an explanation as to why these things are happening & the open ending left me with too many questions.

like I said a solid debut, & I will definitely look out for what the author releases in the future, but this one just slightly missed the mark for me

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review

[Greekchoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT A BOOK!! Spoiled Milk begins with a death and things get worse. The writing is sharp, precise, something almost nostalgic in the way it paints Briarley and the dynamic between the girls. To talk about this book too much would be to spoil it. I admire Avery Curran's restraint: the plot is achingly slow and resists the urge to gesture at itself or puncture the tension. The Queen's England is rotting and we haven't decided if the people to face it are girls or women.

A little bit of Suspiria, a lot of Penance, but also The Locked Tomb and weirdly...The Penderwicks? This might be the only book to ever have scared me.

Cheers to Netgalley and Penguin for the ARC.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published March 10, 2026.

4 stars

Great book with a terrible title. I’m not sure if this is YA, but I don’t think so. It’s 1928 and we follow a group of girls at Briarley, a boarding school in England . These are the sixth formers, the oldest girls in the school and they are all 17 and 18. Chief among them is Emily Locke who is floored when her best friend and star of the school, Violet, dies on her 18th birthday. After that Emily, and her rival, Evelyn, believe that Violet’s death wasn’t natural and they and their friends set out to prove it as things at the school get worse and worse.

Such a lovely sense of menace here. There’s no escape for anyone and it feels so claustrophobic. The whole thing is deliciously dark, plus, boarding school! I really enjoyed this.

[Hester · Rating 5 out of 5]

You may think this is going to be very good, and if so I want you to prepare yourself; it's better than that.

[Azhar · Rating 3 out of 5]

unless i’m stupid but i don’t think we ever really get any answers to the hauntings?? also, the book takes its sweet time getting to the good part and just when it does, it ends?? the prose was great but not great enough to save the story :(


thanking netgalley & the publishers for the ARC.

[eden]

everyday horror of coming of age and the fucked up ordeal of girls’ schools #seated

[eliza tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a beautifully written horror story following a series of suspicious deaths at a boarding school in the early 1900s. full of séances, a complicated haunting, and witty spirits, this book left me unsettled and looking over my shoulder and jumping at the little noises in my house.

there are quite a few characters, each well thought out, unique in her personality, bringing something essential to their little group. none of them truly felt like side characters, which i appreciated and am impressed by.

the enemies to lovers story is incredibly compelling, with bits and pieces you cling to while their world seems to be coming to a terrifying end. sapphics would love this one.

thank you NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

[thetinydemon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the setting, the girls school and the victorian era spiritualism, which both felt a bit like relics, even in the late 1920s timeframe. I became completely engrossed in these characters, who were all so clearly drawn, especially Emily, who was not a terribly likeable heroine, and Evelyn, who was equally thorny and wonderful. You cared about each one of these women, and It hurt to lose them. The spectre of Violet hovering over all of them, the teachers who seemed completely ill-prepared to think of these young women as people... The ill-fitting gender roles and curdled sense of national pride that was being foisted onto these women... It was all really interesting. I'm not sure how well I think the climax worked-- it seemed to clash with the atmospheric spookiness of the rest of the novel, but the coda was really satisfying for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m really sad about this book, it seemed like something that would really be a hit for me but unfortunately it fell flat. We follow 6 girls in 1928 at a boarding school directly following the death of their classmate Violet. The girls then turn to spiritualism in hopes to get answers as to how she died but instead they receive a warning: something is coming.

From the premise I was expecting a quite tense and eerie book, but instead it kind of meandered around with hints of terror and random off-page deaths that seemed more for shock value than moving the haunting forward. Unfortunately, I had little to no attachment to the characters as they were all a bit one dimensional, so their deaths weren’t very impactful. I found myself often getting the characters (apart from Emily and Evelyn) confused a bit.

Throughout the entire book my one questions was really why? Why is this happening? Why here? Why are the main 6 girls not being effected by the haunting in the same way as everyone else? One of the characters even questions this towards the end of the book but unfortunately no one ever really receives an answer. Unless I missed it somewhere.

I do feel like this premise has a lot of promise - the last 15% when the haunting really started ramping up was quite engaging. I just wish I hadn’t had to get through the other 85% to get there. I kept thinking that maybe this was not the medium that this story needed to be told in. Perhaps this could make an interesting movie.

Ultimately this was an ambitious debut, but I’m be curious to see what Avery Curran gets up to next.

Thank you to Quercus Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

[Casey Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a sapphic gothic with all the vibes! Set in the 1920s at an all-girls boarding school, the sudden death of popular girl Violet shakes the campus. The spreading grief transforms into something darker as unsettling events take over campus. Illness, food spoiling, a sense of dread and something sinister at play. This book is a slow-burn and super atmospheric. There is this queer longing and competitive streak among the girls woven all throughout. This adds to the already high tension of events and supernatural mystery. It's a little crazy friends! But this blurring of lines between a psychological decay, and actual otherworldly elements, was my favorite part. It's eerie and atmospheric and even a bit scandalous. I really enjoyed it, I was in the right mood for this when I read it!

Read if you like:
Sapphic lit
Dark academia
Supernatural elements
Heavy atmosphere
Slow-burn horror

[Book Riot Community]

Book Riot’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026:

Sapphic gothic novels are having a moment, and I am here for it. I can't resist the combination of sapphic longing and a creeping sense of doom. At Briarley School for Girls in 1928, something sinister is spreading, rotting meat and curdling milk. Then the body count begins to climb. Emily is convinced her captivating classmate Violet's death was not natural, and she intends to prove it. She teams up with rival Evelyn to try to contact Violet from beyond the veil. Through the medium of Evelyn, Violet warns that the danger has only begun. This promises "teenage repression, queer desire, and the everyday horror of coming of age." —Danika Ellis

[Celine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is tough for me to rate. It has absolutely everything that I want in a book: a girl's boarding school during the Victorian age, séances, teen girls behaving strangely, paranormal activity, mysterious deaths, queer coming of age - the list goes on.

And yet, the pacing was a drag. I really struggled to get into it, every single time I picked it up, which resulted in me skimming towards the end.

I would read more from this author, and I genuinely hope for the book's success. I was charmed by it, deeply, at the beginning. Maybe this is a me problem - a classic case of right book, wrong time.

Regardless, thank you to the publisher for an early copy, in exchange for a review!

[Hutton Laine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gothic, historical horror, rot, the ✨gays✨, slow burn. This book was right up my alley. A girls boarding school from the 1920’s doing spooky shit, HELL YEAH. A decaying building slugging away, HELL YES. A bunch of weird gay girlies summoning ghosts/demons, HELLLLL YEAAAAH BROTHER. The slow pace of this book really added to an atmospheric element, to the rot inside. I loved it. The ending did leave me with questions, but realizing this is going to be part of a series, has me ready to pick up the next.

Thank you author, publishers, and NetGalley for this ARC
🖤

['*•.¸♡ nay♡¸.•*' · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first read the description of this book I was beyond thrilled. I mean, this has everything that I love in a book. It’s gothic, queer, haunted, and set at an all girls school (one of my fav settings!)
I liked the storytelling and overall ‘voice’ of the author, and I found all of the characters to be compelling even when they were a little unlikable (especially Emily who is our pov) it has a cast of quite a few different girls but I felt like the author did a great job of distinguishing them. I definitely had feelings and opinions about each of them! (Marion was a fav of mine!) Some of the school teachers were blending together, but that didn’t take away from the plot or my enjoyment of it.
I noticed a lot of reviews point out pacing problems. I thought the pacing was fine, and I especially liked that the beginning of the book got straight to the point. There were a few moments when the action sort of lagged, but I still think it chugged along at a pace perfectly reasonable to build suspense.
Well, the problem I had with this book is that it never explains the haunting aspect. To be honest it feels like lazy writing to give no explanation for the deaths, rotting, possession, haunting etc and when the characters inevitably “end” the whole affair there is no reason as to why what they did worked. I enjoy other works that have unexplained aspects, but this one did not work for me. I just felt that after ALL THAT I deserved to know why I went through it all.
I still enjoyed the book and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who thinks it sounds interesting, but unfortunately the ambiguous aspect of the story took away from my overall enjoyment of the book.

[Rusha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Girls from boarding school are built different (they choose to stay back after witnessing some scary shit)

[monika · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5. i have very mixed feelings about this book, and i think it’s because i really wanted to like it and i’m disappointed to admit that i didn’t.

even though the story opens with a death, it takes a while to feel like something is actually happening. though once the plot picked up, i quite enjoyed it. there were moments with great, eerie atmosphere: the séances, the things haunting the school, the unsettling incidents, but it just never lingers for long enough until the very end. i think the retrospective nature of the narration helped to create a sense of anticipation, that something is coming or always looming and waiting. at the same time, some things feel brushed aside or skipped over, and i just wish they carried more weight. why include some events or bring up some information and details just for them to be abandoned without any reflection on the characters’ part? maybe it would have been easier for me to let these things go, but i found the ending really frustrating because we never actually get any answers — why, or what is haunting the school, what’s behind the rotting food, what triggered the first death and the ones that follow, why the main group seems not to be affected by whatever’s happening to everyone around them, just nothing.

and the worst part was how hard it was to root for the main characters. they were simply unlikable and unbearable — especially the narrator, Emily, and her idealized friend, Violet. it might be because of Emily’s perspective and the way she presents the others, but i struggled to connect with any of them for longer than a couple paragraphs. i also don’t understand why any of them would be friends in the first place, but maybe they’re all just so insufferable that they fit in together.

that said, i think the book had a lot of potential, and the writing itself is good. the dialogues can be overwhelming at times, especially as there’s a lot of characters and few breaks between the exchanges, but other than that the writing works well with the setting to build atmosphere.

thank you NetGalley and Quercus Books for giving me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delectable romp; a gothic banquet of rot and radiance, set within a 1928 English boarding school where order curdles into menace. The story opens with Violet— beloved, envied, impossible to look away from— plunging to her death on her eighteenth birthday. In this absence, her fellow classmates (some rivals by instinct, companions by necessity) are drawn into an uncanny undertow. Something festers within the school’s walls: spoiled food, creeping fevers, ghostly murmurs, and secrets that cannot remain contained.

What distinguishes this debut is not only the knife sharp atmosphere, though dread shimmers in every shadow, it is Curran’s ability to braid horror with longing, to render spiritualism and decay as mirrors of adolescence itself. Through Emily’s narration— selfish, dedicated, brimming with contradiction— what’s captured is the raw disorder of desire in a world obsessed with obedience and appearance. The supernatural is never an intrusion from elsewhere; it seeps into the minerals of the soil the school stands upon, until hunger, grief, and queerness feel as spectral as any haunting. Above all, is the intrinsic relatability, the timeless experience and dynamics of teenage girls.

Curran reclaims the well-worn trope of the boarding school novel and sets it on fire, transforming a cloistered institution into a crucible of repression, empire, and awakening. The effect is both chilling and tender: a book where beauty and grotesquerie sit at the same table, where terror is breaking bread with restlessness. Spoiled Milk endures not for the phantoms it conjures, but for its understanding that fear lives also in the ache of desire, the cruelty of authority, and the fragile dread of being young, alive, and filled with love to give (and consume).

Thank you, Netgalley & Double Day, for the advance reminder that horror and yearning, when done with a skillful touch, can be the most fun a girl can have.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for providing a copy of this novel!

I loved this book! I was completely pulled in from the start and couldn't put it down. The plot kept me guessing. I never knew what was going to happen next. I also thought Curran did a great job of setting up the suspense. I regularly found myself covered in goosebumps while reading this book.
I also loved all the characters. Well, maybe "loved" isn't the right word. They were all heavily flawed and honestly kind of the worst, but they were written so well that I still really liked them and wanted to see what they would do next. While the main cast was a set of teenagers, I never found myself getting frustrated like I often do while reading YA books. Emily, the narrator, was a highly insecure teen who often lashed out at the other girls for seemly no reason. I feel like this type of character would normally annoy me, but it really worked in this novel. There was also a lot of bickering between the girls, particularly Emily and Evelyn, but again, I thought this really worked. I think all the things that would normally frustrate me in a YA novel worked here because it set up more stress and suspense. Also, while Emily was quite judgmental and could be quite horrible to her classmates, it never came across like the author thought she was in the right. She always came across as an insecure and like she was lashing out, rather than her always being right in her accusations.
While I did love this book, I did find the ending a bit anticlimactic. It wasn't bad by any means, but I wish we could've gotten at least an answer. Oh well though, I likely would've been disappointed by any explanation anyway, so it's probably for the best.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars - I think this was pretty great. Gothic horror meets lesbian Nancy Drew.

You follow a group of 17/18 year old girls in their final year of boarding school in 1928 in the English countryside. When the queen bee (Violet) dies in a tragic accident, her closest friend Emily is convinced she was murdered. The girls learn through a seance that this was just the beginning. Some thing big and dark and ominous is coming.

Standout world building from the author, every single detail felt time period accurate and it really helped immerse the reader into this world. The realistic reactions from the girls to horror, fear, and devastation helped ground the book and enhance the experience for the reader. The depth of the characters and character building was exceptional. The author managed to give the reader a 360 degree view of each character in the way that only a group of friends that have known each other for years can. In that they know the good, the bad, and even things you yourself don't know yet.

I also should mention that I don't usually get scared while reading horror books but this gave me some chills at times. I enjoyed the pacing but if you're looking for a fast pace this is more of a slower build to a chaotic climax.

[J. L. R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran is a horror novel set in the Briarley School for Girls, an all-girls boarding school in England in the 1920s. The book opens with the sudden, inexplicable death of Violet, the queen bee of the school and object of obsession by our narrator, Emily Locke. Emily becomes convinced that Violet’s death was at the hands of their young French teacher, Mademoiselle, whose close relationship with Violet has been gnawing on Emily’s psyche for months. Emily begins a crusade to avenge Violet’s murder, recruiting as many of her classmates as she can. But Violet’s death is just the beginning of a series of hauntings and tragedies to be inflicted on the girls of Briarley. Soon the food starts rotting.

Rot is a very particular kind of corruption. It’s not simply damage, or sickness, or some other kind of potentially curable affliction. Rot is the hidden reality of something already being irredeemably gone. It’s death before the heart stops. The curse of Briarley manifests first in spoiled food, even in things that look normal and delicious on the surface. But like everything else, the adults in power simply try to keep calm and carry on, and demanding the girls do the same. All while the rot grows.

Reading this, I couldn’t help but think about the pandemic, about how the world has mostly tried to move on and repress the grief and paranoia that’s already made so much of us insane. We’ve never really grappled with the scale of the death - instead, governments and corporations rushed to bring us back to normal as soon as possible. There’s no space in this world for grief. As the tragedies continue in Briarley, the girls are given less and less space to grieve, until no one even mentions all that they’ve suffered. With no direction or space to process the magnitude of their loss, Emily and the girls turn to other, more occult solutions to their problems.

Spoiled Milk’s haunted rot isn’t subtle. It’s a clear metaphor - that’s made pretty explicit as the book goes on - for the rot at the heart of the British Empire, and by extension, its rogue child, the USA. The book argues that our world’s greatest Empire is already rotted, and all attempts to smooth over, ignore, or reform it are doomed to fail. It’s already dead. Maybe the girls of Briarley are doomed from the start.

But doom isn’t the only thing repressed by Emily and the girls at Briarley. There’s a clear current of queer desire throughout the cast of characters, with none more clearly repressing than Emily herself, who lashes out at the merest suggestion that her feelings towards Violet are anything other than platonic, who finds herself literally unable to think of the obvious truth. These feelings for each other serve as foil to the rot - actively repressed, impossible to truly change, yet liberatory instead of damning.

Emily is a fun protagonist - she’s mean, she’s selfish, she lies to herself and everyone else around her, and yet she does grow to care for her friends, a cast of characters who rarely grow far beyond their archetypes but are still compelling. It’s the central plot that feels a little underwhelming. There’s rarely a moment of true surprise, as the girls fall through the same rhythms and strategies while one by one, their problems get worse. It’s not very scary, though has it has a couple creepy images, and like many horror-ish books, it builds towards an action-y climax that feels at odds with the rest of the book and like something I’ve read and seen before many times. The prose is relatively straightforward, and I never got the deeper read into Emily and her friends’ psyche that I wanted.

All that said, Spoiled Milk is still a quick, fun read, especially if you’re drawn to the story of these young women trying to grieve their losses and solve their problems in a world that tells them to ignore their desires and their feelings and simply think of old England.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.

[Madilynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm okay I have thoughts

[hunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. you ever read a book that is so incredibly boring that when it starts to get interesting you can’t even bring yourself to keep reading? that’s what this book did for me. gothic horror takes a minute to get exciting, i get that, but it should not have taken as long as it did.

the premise of this book was so exciting for me. an all girls school dealing with a haunting and there’s lesbianism sprinkled in? sign me up. except there wasn’t a whole lot of haunting and the lesbians weren’t even enjoyable characters. all of the characters weren’t interesting actually. our narrator, emily, is probably the worst of them all.

i loved the start; the most loved girl in their class suddenly dies and, all of a sudden, strange occurrences happen. food starts to spoil, more strange deaths happen, and seances are performed to figure out what the hell is going on. that unfortunately never gets answered. there was no actual conclusion as to who or what was causing all of this. there was no spooky history behind the school or cursed objects that were messed with. violet doesn’t even know who pushed her to her death. the book ends with an out of nowhere romance of sorts and… that’s about it. i wanted to like this so bad but it was just boring at the end of the day.

[lav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Doubleday Books for the arc!

----

what a nasty little bite of a novel!

looove the firmly historically rooted take on spiritualism. all but clapped and cheered when i realized we were getting ectoplasm, especially with the period accurate descriptions of The Substance (cheese cloth! yes!!!) i see the author's field of study is 19th c spiritualism and queerness and i am sooo happy that her research was able to shine here

had a fever-dreamlike quality that worked really well, except for a couple points where it didn't—felt a bit of "and then this crazy thing happened! onto the next." found myself wishing for a few more answers at the end, but ultimately the unexplained felt somehow "period" lol, like the book assumes you are familiar with the rules (from another time) of the supernatural that it is operating on

would definitely recommend to lovers of horror, history, and toxic homoeroticism! major win for big enjoyers of all three (me, that's me, i am that)


+ love that emily is relentlessly awful, such a joy to read



4.5

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Step into the halls of Briarley, where nothing is to be trusted and the only thing more frightening than death is having to live long enough to grow up. Both darkly funny and genuinely harrowing, Spoiled Milk is the boarding school novel my spooky heart has been waiting for. Avery Curran has written an absolute knockout. Thank you to the publisher for an advance review copy!

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avery Curran's Spoiled Milk is a somewhat uneven gothic, set in a girls' school in the 1920s. Following the sudden death of Violet, the darling of the upper-year students, things start going oddly wrong. Milk curdles (hence the title). Perfect-looking apples are full of worms. As these events play out, Violet's classmates begin to speculate about whether Violet's death might have been murder and whether attempting to contact Violet via seance might help them avenge her—and understand why the school seems to be literally rotting.

The cast of teenage girls is both interesting and irritating. They have a loyalty to one another, but rivalries and minor issues of dissatisfaction mean that time spent with them is often tumultuous. I remember those years in my own life and to quote a favorite high school teacher, "I would not be your age again for anything." The eerie happenings make the girls somewhat more generous with one another, but also increase the odds of conflict.

Partly because time spend with these girls meant time spent in one miff (quarrel? power struggle?) after another, this was a slow read for me at the start. There was no one I *wanted* to spend time with, though no one was unpleasant enough to get me to stop reading. I found the third quarter of the book most engaging. Quarters one and two were a slow build-up. The fourth quarter was an uneasy wrap-up. The third quarter raced along with lots of action and surprises.

The novel has a bit of a lesbian thread running through it Which friendships are friendships? Which are something more? Do these relationships have any connection to the strange events at the school?

If you enjoy gothics, can have a bit of patience with self-focused young women, and can accept some ambivalence in an ending, you'll most likely enjoy this book.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.

[Emily Garmon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

In the English countryside, there rests an all-girls boarding school named Briarley, once a lord's estate now the domain of women. As a group of girls who have grown up together gear up to complete their final year at Briarley, the unfortunate and untimely death of their de facto leader Violet casues them to question their interrelated relationsips. Emily, for whom Violet was her best friend, feels that Violet's death wasn't accidental and blames their French teacher, Mademoiselle, with whom Violet seemed to be in a clandestine relationship. Emily is joined in her suspicions by Evelyn, Emily's constant rival for Violet's affectations. Emily is determined to prove to the other girls that Violet was pushed and will hear no argument. Reluctantly helped by Evelyn, the girls convince the others to enact a senace to reach Violet for the truth, an event that proves to be a catalyst for supernatural events that slowly but surely derail the school into chaos. What begins as spoiled milk calmy turns into deaths and disappearances, forcing the girls to face their own desires, their structured lives and the very foundation of Briarley itself.

My thougths:
I really wanted to like this book. but unfortunately there was too much wrong to help what was right with it. This is ulitmately a fine character study, but because the characters were so fleshed out, and given so much, the plot was weak. At the end, I still had no idea what exactly had caused the supernatural things to occur, was it just poltergeist activity advacned by a bunch of teenage girls? Or what? And for so much to be made of contacting Violet only for her to not help the other girls whatsoever. I did like the ending but I was left with so many questions that I can't say it left me satisfied.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got an arc from work!

This is a solid debut with a delightfully creepy atmosphere and ending I honestly didn’t see coming. It ramps up the dread and distress and Gay Yearning until the last 100 pages do a genre pivot in a way that not everyone will love but I do think worked for the story being told, even if I wanted a little more about the WHY this haunting was happening (like it seemed to be hinting at some great reason and that reason is probably colonialism and maybe other people are more intuitive than me and got more out of it but that’s just me!) I also appreciated how historical the voice felt, like I was reading something recently unearthed from the 1920s proper (if I had a nickel for every book I read this month that I would wholeheartedly believe the author is a time traveler, I’d have two nickels.)

So yeah, I think this author is definitely one to watch!

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this ARC from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Excellent, excellent, excellent. This did not disappoint. I love horror where weird, strange goings on happen at all girls boarding schools and Spoiled Milk really delivered exactly that. I loved all the characters, they all felt like real teenage girls with personalities and flaws. The building of atmosphere and tension in the boarding school is done really well. It was really quite eerie at times and it kept me awake at night a little! The pacing of the book is great, it unfurls slowly and builds and builds until the very end.

Almost all of the girls have some kind of sapphic overtones or undertones. The dynamic and rivalry between Emily and Evelyn, and of course Violet, was perfect.

I highly recommend reading Spoiled Milk, especially if you’re a fan of:
-Horror set in all girls boarding schools
-The supernatural
-Seances
-Sapphic rivalry

I can’t believe this is Avery Curran’s debut! I will certainly be looking out for any future releases of hers!

[Lorin (paperbackbish) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran— available now!

» READ IF YOU «
🕯️ love girls’ boarding school drama
🥛 are here for gothic vibes and tension
👯‍♀️ enjoy messy girl bestie dynamics

» SYNOPSIS «
At a 1920s girls’ boarding school, one student’s death kicks off a string of increasingly spooky events. Food is suddenly spoiled, more girls are in danger, and some of them decide to hold seances to commune with the spirits and figure out what’s going on.

» REVIEW «
This book was basically written just for me. It’s moody, tense, and packed with moments that’ll give you the chills. The secluded boarding school setting is suuuuper claustrophobic, and adding in a bit of sapphic jealousy and vintage spiritualism really worked for me.

The girls and their bonds are messy in a way I loved, and though it was a bit tricky to keep track of who was who at first, I got there in the end. You do have to be okay not getting all the answers, but honestly that made it feel even more unsettling to me. A GREAT freaking read; one of my most anticipated for the year that totally delivered on vibes and plot.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫