The Tenth Girl

By: Sara Faring

Narrated by: Frankie Corzo, Mark Sanderlin

A haunted Argentinian mansion.
A family curse.
A twist you'll never see coming.
Welcome to Vaccaro School.

Simmering in Patagonian myth, The Tenth Girl is a gothic psychological thriller with a haunting twist.

At the very southern tip of South America looms an isolated finishing school. Legend has it that the land will curse those who settle there. But for Mavi - a bold Buenos Aires native fleeing the military regime that took her mother - it offers an escape to a new life as a young teacher to Argentina’s elite girls.

Mavi tries to embrace the strangeness of the imposing house - despite warnings not to roam at night, threats from an enigmatic young man, and rumors of mysterious Others. But one of Mavi’s 10 students is missing, and when students and teachers alike begin to behave as if possessed, the forces haunting this unholy cliff will no longer be ignored...and one of these spirits holds a secret that could unravel Mavi’s existence.

An Imprint Book

"Faring's exquisite prose weaves a tale that is both seductively eerie and wildly original. I've never read anything like it." (April Genevieve Tucholke, author of The Boneless Mercies)

"A hauntingly good read, full of terror and mystery." (Hypable)

©2019 Sara Faring (P)2019 Macmillan Young Listeners

Good until it's not

I enjoyed this book for the most part. Until details fell apart and could not be pieced back together. I believe the author had a really good idea. But some of the details, lacking or didn't make sense ruined the whole idea. I almost didn't finish the book. I did anyway. It felt... slapped together...not enough explanation of details that would have made the outcome make more sense. I do not recommend this book.

Not great, but not too bad…

I couldn’t stay interested so I would have to go back every so often to listen to what I missed. Not my favorite audiobook.

Not what you think

Only spoiler I will give …

This isn’t a ghost story which honestly was a let down. But the story was okay.

lousy slow story

narrator was good. too bad they had nothing to work with. most awful story I listened to in a long time.

Confusingly bad?

If you are expecting a legitimate ghost story set in Latin America, go read Mexican Gothic. If you want a sloppy mess of half baked plot points, here is the book for you! What could have been a deep and interesting look at Argentine politics in the 1970’s, leftist action, colonialism, and grief is instead an entirely different story with the previous points as set dressing.

SPOILERS AHEAD

This story is about a boy who falls in love with his mother’s avatar in a video game designed for players to haunt, terrorize, and mutilate in game characters (9 of which are 12-13 year old girls with programmed abusive backgrounds) for the purpose of telling a myth. The characters in the school are fabrications whose backgrounds don’t matter despite most of them having detailed histories of abuse.

The novel reads as a rambling mess of half formed ideas and plot points running into each other without forethought or consideration.