cover image The Year of the Gadfly

The Year of the Gadfly

Jennifer Miller. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24 (384p) ISBN 978-0-547-54859-3

High school is bad enough (mean girls, academic pressure, figuring out where you belong), but things are extra awful at Mariana Academy, a scandal-plagued institution with an elaborate code intended to prevent cliques—and student vigilantes to enforce it. The school’s magnetic pull draws two former students back to town with Mariana-related agendas. Meanwhile, new girl Iris Dupont is there for a fresh start after her best friend’s suicide. The narrative alternates between Iris, who’s trying to crack Mariana’s mysteries; her teacher Mr. Kaplan, who hopes to reconnect with old love Hazel, once the “Queen of the Geeks”; and albino Lily, the headmaster’s daughter. Lily’s story is confined to 1999, while everyone else narrates from the present, but the mysteries connect across time. If this sounds complicated, it is: Miller (Inheriting the Holy Land, a memoir) spends so much time knitting past and present and stirring up gothic jealousies and elaborate revenge plots that it’s hard to stay connected to Iris; Jonah; Jonah’s twin brother, Justin; Lily (who’s dating Justin); or Hazel. High school’s hell, sure, but Mariana Academy has too many hellish setups for us to care about who’s doing what to whom. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media. (May)