The damage one man can do…The bitterness of the bruised ego, the cold-blooded wrath of a man scorned: the repercussions impossible to overstate. On can only hope that, as a culture, we have left such things behind, and yet—

I like to read something spooky or witchy in October, and this year’s read was The Furies by Katie Lowe. I picked this one because it has a bunch of things I like in a novel: a girl gang, explorations of that powerful, sweet, dangerous feeling of friendships between teenage girls, a private school, and hints of witchcraft. As I got deeper into the story, I found even more things I like: deep connections to history, passionate teachers, a secret society.

It tells the story of Violet, whose dad and sister were killed in an accident. Her mother entirely falls apart, but she manages to get Violet accepted to the private school on the edge of their small town in England, paying for it with the settlement money. She doesn’t really fit in there, at the school full of kids with old money, but she is drawn into a friendship with Robin, who dresses in black a lot, and seems edgy and exciting, and her friends Alex and Grace.

Mayhem ensues.

The cover text makes this seem like it is a book about adults revealing what happened in the past, in a way that will create consequences, but it’s not really that. There are several murders to figure out, but it’s not really a mystery. It’s not a twisty thriller, despite the marketing spin. (Even though it is twisty, and has some unreliable characters.) Really, it’s a book about how damage of all sorts impacts individuals and then spreads out to the people they know. How someone else’s damage influences you, but how that is baffling because you don’t know what their damage is.

This resonated with me because this was exactly my adolescent experience. (Not the setting and the details but that way you are impacted by your friends’ baggage.) It was a perfect October read!