“Have a potato.”

128. The Hawthorne School – Sylvie Perry

Difficult child? Not fitting in? If you’re a single parent who is having trouble controlling their constantly agitated child, there’s a school that will somehow make them into a well behaved child. It’s the Hawthorne School. Don’t worry about the lack of books or the school stealing your kid’s birth certificate. Just drink this juice and this tea and all our meals are organic. Don’t you want to live on campus and work for the school? It’s what’s best for a super special child like your child who totally isn’t going through withdrawal when you’re not living on school grounds.

This story was utterly predictable, which isn’t so great for a thriller. It’s so clearly a cult. I’ve always felt that I would totally get kicked out of a cult trying to recruit me for asking too many questions, which happens to also be a problem of main character Claudia’s, so that’s validating to some extent. Cults don’t like questions because their ideas don’t stand up to common sense level scrutiny. They’re always good at manipulation or they wouldn’t be able to grow into cults though. It depends on what you want. If you want something they can pretend to get you, you will ask fewer questions.

It was interesting that the author spent like zero time making the cult leader a character that was desirable to follow. G, he goes by G to be obvious and also because his real name is Gabriel, doesn’t want the kids to learn to do things like read or think for themselves and his plan uses drugs to help that along. But! Very soon after we meet him the book ends in the form of two police reports – and honestly, besides G being a celibate cult leader (Um, rare), this ending is the most suspicious thing in the story, but it takes a village to stop a cult just as much as it does to raise a child.

Twiglet’s ideas always stood up to common sense level scrutiny, she would have made an excellent cult- um, just leader.