Ahoy there me mateys!  I wish I would have read reviews of this one before embarking on the journey.  I had been interested in this because of the blurb and because it was a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction (2019). I needed an audio book and this was available.

I have to admit that this audiobook had a rocky start.  I didn't like the narration or the writing style.  I also had an extremely hard time telling the girls apart.  Even the other two secondary characters, the main character Hetty's friends, where difficult to distinguish at times.  I also couldn't tell if some of the characters where students or teachers.

I frankly felt that the story was rather boring.  The ideas behind the Tox and the changes it caused in humans and animals alike were interesting but hardly the "horror" that was claimed.  There were no chills and really no anticipation.  Most of the story seemed to center on all of the girls bickering and ruminations about what the Tox did and how no one knew what caused it.  I read up until when Byatt goes missing.  I wasn't feeling it and decided to read some reviews to see if it was worth finishing.

Basically all of the reviews say that the ending was horrible.  So I went digging and got some ideas about the how the plot unfolds.  I stopped there.  I was entertained when I looked up the audiobook narrator to find that there is another narrator and that the POV switches.   Also there is some romantic relationship angst that was only hinted at in the part I read.  This book does seem to have major fans though.  I got some spoilers from the wiki.

I do almost wish that someone could give me a brief play by play of how bad the plot gets even though I be abandoning ship.  Arrr!