After devouring Hannah Capin’s release Foul Is Fair (and subsequently making it my entire personality for like a month), my expectations for I Am Margaret Moore were very high. And perhaps my high expectations were my downfall, but let’s get into the story first. I Am Margaret Moore follows four friends who spend each summer at Marshall Naval School. Each time Margaret, Rose, Floor and Nisreen return to camp, they get to be themselves without fear of the outside world crashing in and have developed a bond stronger than blood. However, this summer, everything has changed: a boy is dead and girls are missing. On top of that, there are whispers all around camp that Margaret Moore is responsible for one, if not both of these mysterious circumstances. As her friends start to vanish one by one, Margaret will have to clue back together what happened last summer or lose the place—and the people—that’s become her home.
All cards on the table, I had a hard time getting into this story. While I was intrigued by the central mystery, I was also very confused for most of the reading experience because we only get tidbits here and there that you have to clue together yourself while the pacing meanders between racing ahead and leaving you on the side of the road or dragging you like a corpse through the woods. It didn’t help that the narrative jumped between different summers very frequently and if you accidentally missed the half-sentence that gave an indication of what summer the girls are on, you were completely lost as to what had happened already and what was yet to come. I’d almost venture that this was an intentional stylistic choice, but it was hard to get through.
That being said, after the halfway point and the semi-reveal, I was heavily invested in seeing how the story turned out. That, in part, is due to the fascinating characters we get to explore within this story. Margaret is an unusual protagonist—for more than a few reasons as you will learn—and her connections to her best friends and the other camp members are a tangled web that keeps you guessing. I loved how we got this juxtaposition of who the girls can be at camp, not having to fear consequences for being themselves and how that contrasted with the people they portray outside of camp. It’s the idea of reinventing yourself every summer, just reversed, and stories like that always get me excited.
So while this wasn’t my favourite read, I still loved it for what I’ve become accustomed to associate with Hannah Capin, which is her very unique writing style that always keeps me flipping the pages no matter what and the vibe she creates with her books—even though I was lost for most of the time while reading, I still had this sense of place I rarely get from other stories and that alone is always a great reason to pick up Capin’s books. Not to mention that Capin always manages to weave in social commentary into these mysterious novels and I love that girl power and feminism is always at the front of the story even if you don’t realise just how much they catalyse events.
If you like atmospheric settings, dark academic vibes but make it summer camp edition, and a mystery to boot, then I Am Margaret Moore is definitely for you!
I Am Margaret Moore is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of March 15th 2022.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Lyrical and haunting, Hannah Capin’s I Am Margaret Moore is a paranormal thriller that tests the hold of sisterhood and truth.
I am a girl. I am a monster, too.
Each summer the girls of Deck Five come back to Marshall Naval School. They sail on jewel-blue waters; they march on green drill-fields; they earn sunburns and honors. They push until they break apart and heal again, stronger.
Each summer Margaret and Rose and Flor and Nisreen come back to the place where they are girls, safe away from the world: sisters bound by something more than blood.
But this summer everything has changed. Girls are missing and a boy is dead. It’s because of Margaret Moore, the boys say. It’s because of what happened that night in the storm.
Margaret’s friends vanish one by one, swallowed up into the lies she has told about what happened between her and a boy with the world at his feet. Can she unravel the secrets of this summer and last, or will she be pulled under by the place she once called home?
