I guess I like to read coming-of-age novels because they describe a process that is something painfully beautiful and life changing and totally unlike my coming of age event. I don’t think I had a coming-of-age moment, at least not the kind you see in movies (Ahem, I’m looking at you, John Hughes.) And that’s why I love novels that do have wonderous coming of age stories.

In Ellie Eaton’s The Divines, we are thrown between the present day and a run-down all-girls school in England in the 1990’s. Josephine is newly married and on her honeymoon with her husband Jurgen. As they’re driving to their honeymoon destination, Jo decides to make a detour to her old school. The school did not survive a scandal in Jo’s last year there and went on to become a dentist’s office while other buildings on the grounds were torn down.

Jo is thrown back into memories of her days at the girls’ school and how the townies used to bully them, beat them up for being “posh” girls who went to a fancy school. But Jo’s memories begin to lead her down a dark path, many of the memories involving an unliked and unwanted classmate by the name of Daphne who had an unfortunate accident falling out of a window.

Told in turn by the Jo of now (married and with a child) and the Jo of the mid 90’s (first loves, first times, finding a best friend in a townie girl who adopted her) The Divines is a novel about who you think you were, versus how you really were at a certain age. It’s also about realizing how others saw you at a certain point in your life and how you saw yourself and reconciling the two halves.

Make no mistake, this is no ‘frilly girly’ coming of age story. The Divines has sharp teeth and will dig into the deepest part of you, searching for any and everything you’re feeling only to suck that part out of you. This was one of those rare books that when I finished the last page, I had to put the book down and stare at the wall for a few minutes and sort myself out.

Enjoy The Divines and stare at the wall for an hour afterward. I swear you won’t regret it.