A mysterious castle used as a place to help treat girls with mental illnesses and “difficulties” and a girl grieving after her best friend has died come together to bring about a story about dealing with grief and mental illness. The story follows Moira who is being sent to “The Castle” (school for troubled girls) since she has been acting out after her best and only friend has died. Moira has been heavily grieving, skipping school to the point where she can’t graduate, not eating, visiting her friend’s grave, and avoiding everything. Moira is steeped in her grief and when she gets a tattoo, it’s the last straw for her parents, and she is being sent off to hopefully heal at The Castle. However, upon arrival, things are not as they seem. The Castle only has 12 students, all girls, is a castle set in a location that is not disclosed, time is not told, and there is essentially no school, just daily therapy, and there are bars on the windows. Moira meets Dr. Prince, the head of the school and the therapist who is in charge of all the girls. Besides Dr. Prince, there is Randy (Bertrand) his son who also stays at the school but is treated as invisible by all the other girls except Moira. There she also meets the other girls:
ELEANOR- her roommate, finding her relief by cutting herself
MEI-pulling her hair because she doesn’t want to be defined by her beauty. She’s more than that.
VIRGINIA- suffering from ADHD. She has hard times to concentrate and be the daughter her parents want.
GREY- just like her name she sees everything grey, suffering from chronic depression
ALICE- cannot be happy about her appearance, fighting with anorexia.
RYAN- wants to keep her special treasure by suffering from kleptomania.
RAINA- stopped talking after witnessing something so tragic and she never feels safe to come clean.
REVA- she cannot stay at the same place for a long time. She’s at flight risk. She cannot restrain her uncontrollable instinct of running away.
BETH- her sports injuries resulted with drug addiction.
HALSEY- her desire to get approval of her inner circle pushed her to be an alcoholic.
CASSANDRA-having problems with authorities, she cannot be told what she’s going to do.

One night Moira notices the bars on her window are broken and her and her roommate sneak out to follow the music they hear at night only to find another castle, a school for troubled Boys except in that school there is warmth, music, light and it appears to be better, but not everything is as happy as it appears. The story is told from Moira’s point of view but throughout the book we get a chapter of each girl and her backstory about why/how she ended up going to The Castle. I thought that was a great touch to the book. There is light romance and mystery but overall, this is a story about dealing with grief and accepting it. It has a lot of very relatable things and was a touching story. I was surprised by how much this story touched me. I would definitely recommend this book as a read! My favorite quote from the arc was “ That’s the never-ending strangeness of grief: Even after you accept it, it doesn’t go away. In fact, I think accepting it means acknowledging that it may never go away.”

*Thanks Netgalley and SOURCEBOOKS Fire for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*