Conversion

Conversion by Katherine Howe

Publisher: Putnam

July 2014

ISBN: 978-0-399-16777-5

Pages: 418

Contemporary Young Adult Suspense 

Danvers, Massachusetts

At St. Joan’s Academy it is senior year and the school is a pressure cooker. Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together though dealing with everything from the battle for valedictorian, college applications and deciphering boys’ texts. Until they are unable to do so.

Clara Rutherford who is the school’s queen bee suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle class and while she is the first she most definitely isn’t the last. The mystery illness quickly spreads to others first through her closest clique of friends and then other students and symptoms follow: hair loss, seizures and violent coughing fits. St. Joan’s is suddenly buzzing with rumors and then the rumors blossoms into full-blown panic.

Now the media is descending on Danvers, Massachusetts. Everyone is scrambling to find something or someone to blame. Is it stress? Pollution? The girls faking? While doing some extra credit reading of The Crucible, Colleen seems to be the only one to realize that Danvers was once Salem Village. Where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago.

This book takes the story of true events and turns it into an amazing story that is very hard to put down once the reader starts it.  The reader will want to find out just what is happening in Danvers and they won’t be disappointed in the journey that the story takes them on. It is also a story that will stay with them long after the last page is read. This is a must read for anyone that enjoys suspense stories.  It will keep the reader guessing until the very end.

I give this one 5 red roses

LRH