Wayward Girls by Claire Matturro and Penny Koepsel

Wayward Girls by Claire Matturro and Penny Koepsel

When late-night phone calls summon Jude Coleridge and Camille Prescott to the demolition of their old boarding school, Talbot Hall, painful memories bombard the former best friends. Though estranged for years, both bear the physical and emotional scars from their youth. At Talbot, they were branded “the crazy girls, the ones who lie.” They soon formed a trio with a new student, WandaAnn, who ensnared them into her bewildering relationship with the school psychologist, Dr. Hedstrom. But WandaAnn’s wild stories masked a truth that threatened to engulf them all. As teens, the girls could only rely on each other as they moved toward an unfathomable, fiery danger. Now, in the crumbling halls of the old school, hours before its final destruction, they must grant forgiveness, to themselves and others, if they are to move forward.

Sizzling with tension and intriguing characters, Wayward Girls is set in a creepy Central Florida boarding school that is supposed to provide structure for teens whose parents or therapists have deemed them as too rebellious, who thought they were "crazy girls. The ones who lied." Their infractions seem to be as trivial as skipping school— so what's really going on?... The careful unfolding of the truth as the story moves back and forth in time is a testament to the skill of these talented authors. The Matturro-Koepsel collaboration has produced a compelling novel, one worthy of wide readership and a lasting place on bookshelves. ~Southern Literary Review August Read of the Month.

While the story goes to some dark places (it is a school for troubled teens, after all), readers can't help but get engaged in the evolving friendships formed at Talbot, and the secrets that bonded these three girls for life. Wayward Girls will leave readers asking: Who are the friends in your life who will help you hide the body?~Blogger and award-winning author Karen Spears Zacharias

Wayward Girls doesn't whitewash much in a story that as fiction will keep a reader needing to unravel one convoluted knot after another. The writers have convincingly placed their characters in the middle of the1970s, with allusions to vernacular products and styles of speech, even the mores of the time. And it is this veracity, seemingly so close to the recollections the authors must have of their own time as "wayward girls" in a remote boarding school not so very far away in memory time, that gives Wayward Girls its punch. ~Tallahassee (FL) Democrat