Less Lord of the Flies, more Annihilation. Honestly more interested in the character dynamics and personal introspection moreso than the central mystery at hand. A lot of revelations were quite dramatic and felt a little heavy-handed

(thinking about the Headmistress' attempts to kill the girls and then poison them via water bottles -- like Hetty's talking suddenly felt unnatural and moralising)

and I think part of the issue was that it was too short to fit the amount of plot points it wanted to explore. Breadth over depth. Still, the writing style was intensely atmospheric, vaguely unsettling and mildly grotesque. Byatt's chapters were my favourite because of Power's more experimental prose -- foregoing basic punctuation and repeating short phrases to invoke a scattered, fleeting consciousness.

The romance was rushed and honestly I was more invested in the relationship between Hetty and Byatt (more prime for exploring toxicity, devotion and obsession) and the romantic triste between Hetty and Reese emerged out-of-the-blue, taking away from a further exploration of whatever fucked up thing was going on between Hetty and Byatt.