You’re at a prestigious boarding school, you’re head house prefect, and you’re popular. Life sounds pretty brilliant for Kate Jordan-Ferreira in Sue Wallman’s Dead Popular, right? Not all is as it seems in this twisty young adult mystery.
Kate is in fifth form at Mount Norton, a highly prestigious school known for its artwork, and is chosen as the house prefect for Pankhurst house. Everything is as it seems, having the top room with the nicer coloured sheets, her best friends as vice-prefects, and being in perfect position to claim Hugo from one of the other houses as hers. Well, that was the plan before Wibbz, the Pankhurst housemistress was fired. The new housemistress, Ms Calding, aims to change all that, starting with making sure that everyone’s adhering to the house rules.
Although she’s supposed to be a role model, Kate is now forced to go behind the new housemistress’ back to plan the annual Pankhurst party, following the party Veronica, the previous year’s prefect, threw last year. As Kate appears rather focused on her vanity and reputation, she books this beach house with a spectacular view from her godfather. As soon as it is planned, she invites everyone from Pankhurst, as well as the other houses prefect to the party, including Munro and Veronica, wanting to show Veronica how it is really done, except- someone dies.
I love how the boarding school setting was done, with the divisiveness between the rather stuck up students who only cared about their popularity and money, and the scholarship students, who can barely afford even the most basic things that the others have. With the drama happening around Sasha, a girl expelled from the school due to supposedly cheating on her scholarship test by printing it out from a laptop early, not all is as straightforward as putting the blame on her. It appeared that someone else in the school had a secret and didn’t want to be found out.
All these secrets lead to Veronica making the artwork ‘Things that we keep hidden’, which is an interactive artwork, which cleverly foreshadows what really happened in Pankhurst that lead to Sasha getting expelled. It gets to the point where it sounds like every person in the school, including Kate herself is exposed. The secrets kept snowballing and I was at the end of my wits seeing if I could try and guess what happened – I couldn’t guess until the end though, it was pretty built up on twists and I enjoyed that!
I felt that there were quite a few characters that had underlying motives, such as Clemmie, Veronica, and Bernard. Whilst some of these characters were fleshed out, I felt that I was missing some pieces for others, and I would’ve liked more! The way that Sue wrote Clemmie made me hate her, and I think that was a brilliant thing to feel within this book. I also loved how Ms Calding appeared more grouchy nanny than Mary Poppins – like, and I really wanted more of her story, as she had little page time. Kate and a few of the other characters fell a little flat for me, as they appeared just as whinny vain girls that didn’t really grab me as much as I would have liked. However, I did love how Veronica and Munro were intertwined as mysterious people whilst everyone else appeared preoccupied within their own bubbles.
Overall, if you’re looking for a quick young adult mystery that sounds like Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers crossed with elements of Poirot-like mystery, this is the read that you’re looking for.
Dead Popular is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A new chilling read from the author of Lying About Last Summer.
The reigning queen bee, Kate, knows that you don’t become the most powerful girl at school by playing nice. But when other students start revealing long-held secrets anonymously, she realizes someone is playing a much more dangerous game – and they know too much about Kate’s past. If she doesn’t figure out who’s behind this, her final year at Pankhurst could be exactly that: her final year.
