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The Secret Gondal Society
California girl, Tilly, is a scholarship student and junior transfer to an exclusive all girls school in New England.Thrust into a new environment where everyone else seems to have known one another forever, Tilly finds herself suddenly immersed in the lives of five other girls in her class. With the inspiration from the all female-writer curriculum assigned by the young English teacher, Miss Anderson, the girls create The Secret Gondal Society. A Secret Society loosely based on the Bronte sister's idea of writing together in a shared fantasy world.Through the friendship forged within the society, the girls face the realities of life through the fantasies created in their writing.This compelling story is completely told through letters and short stories written by Tilly to a mysterious "Secret Sister", you, the reader.
214 pages, Paperback
Published May 14, 2021
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 12, 2024
I loved the concept. I loved that it was epistolary format.
I was disappointed by the execution. There were a lot of events that were either just dropped on us without any real foreshadowing that they were coming, or that were basically outlined and then handed to us. There were other areas of the story that felt like they were left almost completely unexplored, despite how important they were (or should have been) to Tilly. Not just because she's the main character, but because we're getting this story directly through her words and writings, I feel like those should have featured more prominently.
I also wish that more time and exploration had been spent in the written shared world the girls were creating, especially since I was expecting it to be a tool to explore the emotional chaos they were each going through. Instead, it felt like all we got was a brief info dump of each of them periodically instead.
Such a fantastic idea, and I wanted to love it. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my hopes. :(
I was disappointed by the execution. There were a lot of events that were either just dropped on us without any real foreshadowing that they were coming, or that were basically outlined and then handed to us. There were other areas of the story that felt like they were left almost completely unexplored, despite how important they were (or should have been) to Tilly. Not just because she's the main character, but because we're getting this story directly through her words and writings, I feel like those should have featured more prominently.
I also wish that more time and exploration had been spent in the written shared world the girls were creating, especially since I was expecting it to be a tool to explore the emotional chaos they were each going through. Instead, it felt like all we got was a brief info dump of each of them periodically instead.
Such a fantastic idea, and I wanted to love it. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my hopes. :(
Displaying 1 of 1 review