A Room Away From the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma

It proves difficult to get close to the other girls, but she's intrigued by Monet, who lives in the room beneath hers and seems to be trying on a new persona every time they meet.īefore long, it becomes clear that freedom is not something that comes easy to the residents of Catherine House. First there's the contract and vow of confidentiality she is asked to sign, then the whispers and strange looks from the other residents, and perhaps strangest of all, the creepy portrait of Catherine de Barra, which subtly shifts every time Bina looks at it. She knows there's a room available, and she wants to experience the freedom her mother had before Bina came along and messed up her life.īut Catherine House is not quite what she expected. She's headed to Catherine House, the women's boarding house where her mother stayed before getting pregnant with her. After crashing a party to give her evil stepsisters one last thing to hate her for, she takes off for New York City. As the years pass, it gets worse and worse, until Bina's mother decides to pack her off to stay with church friends until things settle down.īina has other plans. But instead, they moved in with another man and his two daughters, whose intense hatred of Bina is like something out of a fairy tale. When Bina and her mother ran away from her abusive father, they were supposed to end up in New York City. In A Room Away from the Wolves, angry, complicated girls get entangled in a Gothic mystery with all the classic elements - an old house, a cursed ring, a legacy handed from mother to daughter - but Nova Ren Suma manages to take these tropes and transform them into something modern and biting that lingers far beyond the final page.

A Room Away From the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma