This was a pick for the Dover Public Library’s Reading Rainbow Queer Book Club in September. I was pretty excited because it’s billed as queer MacBeth retelling set at a gothic boarding school. Book group gave it kind of mixed reviews and I sort of agree.
It was really cool to see a Shakespeare retelling full of queer teenagers. A creepy boarding school is a great setting, and I love a scary movie that starts with an ill advised Ouija board is fun.
I think that the fact that I know MacBeth pretty well hurt my enjoyment of the book. I couldn’t stop focusing on trying to figure out who was who in the cast and comparing it to the original play.
I did have a moment where I had to put the book down because things got too real after Delilah fell out of the window. (Minor spoiler but it’s very near the start of the book, and, you know, MacBeth, Delilah = Duncan). I think Robin had a good idea, but she fell kind of short by trying to stick REALLY close to the MacBeth plotline. And she probably should have left the whole ghosts of enslaved people plotline out of it. That wasn’t well done. :/
The thing that bummed me out the most was the fact that Maria was controlled by ghosts way too much. The horror of MacBeth is that, yes, he is influenced by ghosts, but he CHOSES to do terrible things. Maria didn’t have enough agency.