St Mallory’s Forever! — A (fairly spoiler-free) Review

I don’t expect I’ll ever be a published author: I enjoy writing, but I don’t take it quite that seriously — I just write stories for fun. But I love to hear about fellow teenagers getting published. As soon as St Mallory’s Forever! came out, I rushed out (or rather, turned on my Kindle) and bought the book. I was not disappointed. Christopher Paolini is the only other teen-author whose published books I’ve read, but while it is very difficult to compare St. Mallory’s Forever! with the Inheritance Cycle, given that they are such different genres, Charley Robson and Miriam Joy join Paolini as inspiring teens.

St. Mallory’s Forever! is written by Charley Robson (17 years old), Miriam Joy (16 years old?) and Saffina Desforges (Who I’m not too sure about — I think she is actually a partnership: two people. And I don’t think either of them are teenagers.). It strikes me as incredible that a novel could be co-authored. I mean, a biography, maybe, but in a novel surely everyone would have different ideas as to where the story should go? Nevertheless, the plot was remarkably coherent and differences in writing style were managed by the fact that the story alternates between the points of view different people. Here is a fairly spoiler-free summary of the story:

It’s the start of a new term at St. Mallory’s, a boarding school where rather posh families send their girls to be educated. Abbie and Teresa are returning, and there will be two new students in their grade this year — whose names are rumoured to be Helen and Zoo-Anne. After a few relational mishaps, Helen and Zoo-Anne (whose name turns out to be Xuan — pronounced “shin”) become good friends with Abbie and Teresa. At first it seems like it’s going to be a fairly normal school-term: studying hard on weekdays and shopping in Brighton on weekends (and hopefully avoiding the nudist beach). But after some strange events — which include a bursar gawking at Helen’s teacher mother during classes, and a music piece dated after its composer died — it becomes clear that a mystery is underfoot…

So there we have it: a classic boarding-school novel. If you’ve read Enid Blyton it might put you in mind of Malory Towers or St Clare’s. (Or it might not. I’ve read Enid Blyton, and I’d never heard of either series until two weeks ago. She’s only the most prolific British author in history.) But while in many ways it’s a classic boarding-school novel, this book differs from others of its genre in that it is thoroughly modern. It is (I believe) a very accurate depiction of a 21st century boarding school, perhaps minus the mystery. And the story is told in blog-posts.

This gives a whole new twist to the old journal-style novel genre — and not just because the entries have a special name. For one thing, blog-posts are written to be entertaining. (and let me tell you: Abbie, Helen and Xuan are a lot more entertaining than me) Journal entries can get dry and boring, but these blog-posts are delightfully funny and interactive with the reader. For another thing, a journal entry usually happens once a day, but a blog-post happens every time something interesting happens.

Another thing that was interesting about reading such a modern novel is that I understood most of the references. Rather than references to ancient bands or ancient politicians or Walter Cronkite, this has references to people like Usain Bolt and Harry Potter, products like iPads, and places like Heathrow airport. Even the older references are to things like The Lord of the Rings and Pride and Prejudice that I know about. I guess these must be past things that the current generation thinks are important, rather than past things that past generations thought were important.

St Mallory’s Forever! is a mystery novel, so naturally I should discuss what I thought of the mystery element. It seemed to take a while for the mystery to kick into gear, but I didn’t really mind because I was quite amused up to that point by all the goings on at St Mallory’s, which are told very humorously. The unfolding of the plot did seem to slow down again a couple of times in the middle of the novel, but once again the good narration made fairly light of this. Around 70% of the way through I did think “enough with digressions and interrupting yourself, get on with the mystery!” a couple of times, but it really picked up at about 80%. The mystery itself was, I think, well planned, and the clues and red-herrings well laid, although in the end it was not an overwhelmingly complicated mystery — just complicated enough to make a good story. I suppose you don’t want to go overboard in your debut novel (a mistake Paolini made), but once the authors gain experience in this genre their plots will surely get more complex.

I thought the character development of Helen in particular was good in this novel. All the way through she is a well-written character with realistic strengths and weaknesses, and she goes from being an often bad-tempered girl who just wants to live in London — and wants to hate St. Mallory’s — to becoming some one who says— well… I won’t spoil it for you. Also, even though she came across as a bit of an uncultured city kid, she quotes The Lord of the Rings, which automatically makes someone awesome.

The other characters are good too, but Helen is probably the best. I thought it was strange how Xuan, for whom English was a fifth language, knew so many English idioms — maybe the Brits just use so many more idioms than the rest of us that you can’t help but pick them. I did think it was pretty funny how she points out so many quirks of the English language. (“why do people say ‘pretty’, which usually means ‘beautiful’, when they mean to say ‘quite’?”)

From the way it finished, I couldn’t tell if St. Mallory’s Forever! is meant to have sequels or not. It doesn’t exactly promise them, but it certainly leaves the door wide open. I suppose that’s the way to do it, really.

So all in all, St. Mallory’s Forever! is some pretty enjoyable light reading (though not so light that it didn’t have me looking up words in the Kindle dictionary pretty often!) and I would recommend that you give it ago, especially if you like a light-hearted mystery. It would probably appeal to girls more than guys, but I’m a guy and I read it, so its certainly not gender exclusive. It would probably appeal to people most between the ages of about 12 and 17, but don’t be exclusive about that either. It only costs 3 bucks in the Kindle store (not available in print yet), so it would be a good way to liven a dull weekend. (actually, it was longer than I was expecting — though why I was expecting a short book, being familiar with Paolini, I don’t know) But I digress. Give St. Mal’s a go!