Teen Street Team Reads: Killing November

Members of the Teen Street Team share their book recommendations. This month, our guest blogger gives a review of Killing November by Adriana Mather.

Teen Street Team member Aliza is our guest blogger for this month and tells us about Killing November.

Killing November by Adriana Mather – Print, eAudiobook

“From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Hang a Witch comes a thriller set at a secretive boarding school where students are trained to carry on family legacies that have built—and toppled—empires. Think Umbrella Academy with teenage assassins.

November is as good as dead. She just doesn’t know it yet.

At the international Academy Absconditi, there’s no electricity, no internet, and an archaic eye-for-an-eye punishment system. Classes range from knife throwing and poisons to the art of deception. And the students? All silver-spoon descendants of the world’s most elite strategists—training to become assassins, spies, and master impersonators.

One is a virtuoso of accents—and never to be trusted. Another is a vicious fighter determined to exploit November’s weaknesses. And then there’s the boy with the mesmerizing eyes and a secret agenda.

November doesn’t know how an ordinary girl like her fits into the school’s complicated legacy. But when a student is murdered, she’ll need to separate her enemies from her allies before the crime gets pinned on her . . . or she becomes the killer’s next victim.

From New York Times bestselling author Adriana Mather comes the first book in a thrilling new series that will leave you breathless.”

I recently read a book called Killing November, by Adriana Mather, and let me just say, this is my favorite book EVER. In a thriller and spy fiction, the main character November is a seemingly ordinary girl who lives a seemingly ordinary life, until she’s drugged and shipped off to a new school that is completely off the grid. That school is called Academy Abscondidi, and well, you pretty much know all you need by reading the quote from the book above. It’s basically a twisted version of Hogwarts. When she arrives at the school, she starts to question everything about herself, but she doesn’t have much time to worry about that. Someone’s killing the students off in the school, and November might be next. 

In my opinion, this is the best book I’ve ever read. It had a very unique and creative plot but didn’t follow the cliche “young adult assassin” plot (my goodness, it sounds so wrong saying that). The main character, November, is super likable as well, which just makes the experience of reading the book even better. My little sister, who is a very reluctant reader, actually recommended this book to me, so I would recommend it to anyone who needs to read but doesn’t like to (for example, a school assignment) or someone who simply needs to get out of a reading slump.