“Niven’s signature ingredients: deep sensitivity, romance, poetry, and misunderstood, passionate characters. Now add a gothic mansion, a dangerous cliffside and a charismatic genius, and she’s serving up a standout dark academia thriller.”
“A poignant story of young love, yearning, and the desire to live. Like the best gothic mysteries, this one is drenched in atmosphere and unease-—a taut, exquisitely executed novel from start to finish.”— Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Girl
A simmering psychological thriller about a dead teacher at an elite boarding school, the students who had every reason to want her gone, and the tangled web of rivalry and romance concealing the truth…
At an elite New England boarding school, eight students are selected for an exclusive storytelling workshop with the one and only Meredith Graffam—an enigmatic writer, director, and actress. For sixteen days, they will live in the isolated estate of the school's founder, surrounded by snowy woods and a storm-tossed sea. Only one of the chosen will walk away with a lifechanging opportunity to realize their creative dreams.
Everyone, including Graffam, has a compelling reason to be there—Effy, the orphan, Isaac, the legacy, Ness, the wallflower, Ramon, the outsider, and Arlo, whose unexpected arrival leaves Effy spiraling—but only the most ambitious will last the term. Graffam's unorthodox methods push the students past the breaking point, revealing their darkest secrets, taking unthinkable risks, and slowly starting to turn on one another. But Graffam never expected they would turn on her…
Praise for When We Were Monsters
“This homage to the works of Shirley Jackson and Lois Duncan is a sinister look at unchecked ambition and creativity pushed to the brink of madness.”
— Booklist
“Niven's poetic prose distinctly sets the macabre scenes ("the house breathing and expanding around us like some sort of beautiful, consumptive accordion")…. A group of eight gifted teen students take part in an upsettingly immersive storytelling workshop in this eerie and suspenseful YA psychological thriller.
— Shelf Awareness
“Fans of dark academia will enjoy this atmospheric story of art, lies, and redemption that features a lurking, slowly building sense of dread that grows throughout the novel. Leisurely and spine-tingling.”
— Kirkus
“When We Were Monsters is more than just a murder mystery at boarding school. It’s a tale of creativity and corruption, of young love and old grudges, of what it means to confront the monsters around us; and those within us. By the final chapter, one thing is clear: Jennifer Niven isn’t afraid to venture into darker territory, and she does so while keeping that empathetic touch that made readers fall in love with her work in the first place. The result is a book that feels at once eerily haunting and achingly human. Only the monstrous will survive; and in Niven’s capable hands, that makes for one heck of an engaging read!
— The Honey POP
“A moody prologue immediately establishes stakes and tension, which Niven deftly builds upon through each subsequent and tautly paced chapter… as the novel spirals toward a chilling resolution.”
— Publishers Weekly
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places comes a psychological thriller about the monsters who walk among us—even in the glittering upper echelons of society—and the ways in which we seek redemption for the wrongs we've done.
