Review and Giveaway: The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller

The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller is an interesting combination of coming of age and psychological thriller. The novel equally balances episodes of high school angst with a gripping mystery that keeps the pages turning - in fact, I was gripped from the first pages and couldn’t put this one down.

The book opens with the arrival of the Duponts in Nye, Massachusetts where fourteen year old Iris will start school at the prestigious Mariana Academy. Iris is precocious with a keen interest in journalism - so keen that she travels to school with a briefcase and carries on conversations with the deceased Edward R. Murrow. Upon arriving at Mariana, Iris is looking for a “big story” which she can break in the school’s newspaper. She doesn’t have to look far - the school’s Prisom Party offers plenty of potential intrigue and Iris sets about learning everything she can about the storied academy and its secret society.

In addition to Iris’s point of view, the story is also told from the point of view of two past students. Lily Morgan is the daughter of the headmaster who left the school under interesting circumstances in 2000. Jonah Kaplan attended Mariana at the same time as Lily and is now back at the academy as a biology teacher (Iris is one of his students). The Mariana Academy and their role in its murky history connects all three narrators and they each reveal another piece of the many mysteries which underlie this novel.

As with many books set in high school, Year of the Gadfly explores the science of fitting in and the devastating results when one does not fit in. The children at Mariana Academy are under intense pressure to succeed at the competitive prep school. Perhaps that brings out the worst in these students because they seem inordinately cruel to each other and the secret society plays a special role in the bullying perpetrated by the student body. The scenes in which students are blatantly left out are expertly written - I could feel the sting of rejection just reading them.

The Year of the Gadfly is ambitious - it combines coming of age with psychological thriller and includes three narrators recounting two distinct periods in the Mariana Academy history. Toss in the eccentric Iris who speaks to the smoking apparition of Edward R. Murrow and you have a book with the potential to be disjointed or bizarre. However, it is a credit to the author that the book is cohesive with each scene and sentence sitting well together and adding to the story. This is a gripping novel which gives the reader much to consider - I think about these characters and the storied Mariana Academy.

 I read this book as part of the TLC Book Tour for the novel - you can see more reviews from others on the tour at the book's page on TLC.

Giveaway
I am pleased to have one copy of this novel to giveaway - please leave a comment below with a way to contact you for your chance to win. Winners will be selected next Monday, May 21st. US and Canada only, please.