I picked this up in October when I was in the mood for something spooky but not too scary, ideally with a campus novel feel, and while this wasn’t anything particularly excellent, it did hit those notes.

Madam follows a young Classics teacher named Rose in the late 90s who takes a post at a remote, prestigious all-girls boarding school in the Scottish highlands. When she arrives, she immediately senses something highly secretive and eerie happening that she is not yet privy to as the first outside hire in decades. The story follows Rose’s attempts to honor her mounting discomfort and piece together the truth of what happens at Caldonbrae Hall.

To me, Madam felt like what would happen if Paris Geller entered a thriller-writing contest at Chilton. It is creepy and disconcerting, but fairly underdeveloped. There is a feminist bent but it’s pretty clumsily delivered. The school’s discipline was pretty inconsistent and the ending felt too tidy. That said, the atmosphere of unease was well-delivered and the scenes were richly described.