Tautly written, tense, and evocative, this is a stunning YA novel by award-winning and critically acclaimed author Anna-Marie McLemore.
FLAWLESS GIRLS
by Anna-Marie McLemore
Feiwel & Friends, May 2024
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)
The Soler sisters are infamous in polite society―brazen, rebellious, and raised by their fashionable grandmother who couldn’t care less about which fork goes where. But their grandmother also knows the standards that two Latina young ladies will be held to, so she secures them two coveted places at the Alarie House, a prominent finishing school that turns out first ladies, princesses, and socialites.
Younger sister Isla is back home within a day. She refuses to become one of the eerily sweet Alarie girls in their prim white dresses. Older sister Renata stays. When she returns months later, she’s unfailingly pleasant, unnervingly polite, and, Isla discovers, possibly murderous. And the same night she returns home, she vanishes.
As their grandmother uses every connection she has to find Renata, Isla re-enrolls, intent on finding out what happened to her sister. But the Alarie House is as exacting as it is opulent. It won’t give up its secrets easily, and neither will a mysterious, conniving girl who’s either controlling the house, or carrying out its deadly orders.
Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latine, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; ; Dark and Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; The Mirror Season, which has recently received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and School Library Journal; Lakelore, on ALA’s 2023 Rainbow Book List, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness; and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (Fall 2022), which was longlisted for the National Book Award. In 2023, they were a LAMBDA Lammy Award finalist.
Hope is dangerous. Love is deadly.
As a cupid, Jude thinks they understand love a little bit more than the average human. It makes sense — Jude’s been studying love their whole teen life. And, yes, there have been some bumps in the road, and they’re currently on probation for doing something that they absolutely, definitely shouldn’t have done… but they’re ready to prove they can make matches without ever getting involved.
Merrick and Estella Darling are the last residents of Norland House, and the heirs apparent to their family’s Manor seat after the disappearance of their mother leads to their father’s suicide. As the next Manor Lord, one of them will assume the responsibility of ruling over the Darling province of Sussex—and, more importantly, guarding it against the monsters that lurk, unseen, in the fog that edges the province’s borders. History tells that the Phantoms used to be human, until the mist crept into their veins and turned their blood white instead of red. Now, the Manors are all that stand between the creatures and their redblooded prey. Vain and beautiful Merrick just wants to get back to the bustle of New London, where she never wants for an admirer. She sees an advantageous marriage to a Manorborn man from one of the wealthier, more cosmopolitan, Inner Ring provinces as her ticket out of provincial, countryside Sussex. But when her return home to Norland House results in the reveal of a world-altering secret—that her father was himself a Phantom—her future changes in a flash.
Book 1: THE GRIMROSE GIRLS
Book 2: THE WICKED REMAIN