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Rebecca McCormick. Powered by Blogger.

The Four by Ellie Keel - Review

Sunday, October 13, 2024


So I hated this book. I wanted to finish it because I was already invested, but it was four hundred and forty pages of my life that I will never get back, and I am cross about it. 

I can't remember where I came across it, but I must have, somewhere, because I added it to my hold list at the library. However, this was a while ago so I had totally forgotten why I ordered it. It's touted as 'dark academia' which it really isn't, it fails at that completely in my opinion. It is also supposedly adult fiction but honestly it reads more like Young Adult and should have been marketed as such. 

I know a couple of people who really liked this book but I just really couldn't. It just kept going and it just didn't stop. I have barely any redeeming thoughts about it but let me tell you about it anyway.

The book is set at High Realms, an exclusive fee paying school in Devon. Four students from poorer backgrounds have been given scholarships, back in 1999. They are Rose, Marta, Lloyd, and Sami. Rose is the protagonist of the book and it's all from her point of view. She has left her dad in London. He drives a cab. Her mum died three years ago. She and Marta share a room in the top of the school, Room 1A. Marta's dad is a professor and she has been homeschooled until now. Lloyd was brought up in care and Sami is from Leeds, although his parents are both in the medical field I am pretty sure. 

Right from the beginning the rest of the school hates the four 'millennium scholars'. They are ostracised by their peers and by the teachers, except for the school counsellor, Dr Reza. They are picked on and bullied, especially by the "Senior Patrol" who are prefects, including Genevieve and Sylvia. Gin's boyfriend, Max, does somewhat take to the four of them and Rose has a huge crush on him. However, everyone else hates them. So for a start, do you really want me to buy that an entire sixth form is picking on four kids they don't know, without stopping, for weeks and weeks on end, and that not only do all the teachers know, that they are actually endorsing it? Come on. Private schools are bad but it's just so heavy handed. 

Something happens which means Marta needs to rely on the three others - her only friends - for her survival. And then terrible things keep happening and keep happening, and it just goes on and on and on. I was hoping there would be some kind of twist or redemption which would make the whole rest of it worth it, but unfortunately not. 

There is a sapphic love story which again comes out of nowhere and which also includes one of the bullies, which again makes no sense because why is Rose so forgiving? For a few kisses and some sex? Come on. 

None of the main four characters are sympathetic, or really fleshed out enough for the reader to care. The school is needlessly complicated, not only in terms of geography but in terms of everything else, too. The ending was not at all worth it. I'm giving this one star.  

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