Gobbled this up! This plot is so ridiculous in hindsight but something about how it was written had me invested and felt like it could happen 😁. I recommend the book so you can flip back and forth to double-check things (reading this w/o being able to do that I think I’d start to feel frustrated because it’s quite a tangled plot). 

 

Energy: Cynical. Adventurous. Suspicious. 

 

🐩 Tail Wags Feeling like part of the investigation. Flipping through all the documents, message boards, DMs to piecing things together. The combination of group drama, pettiness, mysteries, and subtle humor. The epistolary format. Getting to know the characters and their personalities before we ever get a clear image of them physically. Playing with assumptions/bias. 

 

Scene: 🇬🇧 Documents and communications related to a new master’s degree in Multimedia Art at Royal Hastings school. 

Perspectives (mixed, ~9):  Six students of varying ages - A ‘real’ artist whose career spans ten years; an art supplies store owner hoping to switch to artist in retirement; a mature student continuing studies after they paused them to assist the family with running an art gallery; a full-time financial marketer taking a creative course to ‘balance the stress’; a single parent of two kids and freelance graphic designer; the youngest student aimning to be the best in the class. There are also communications and grading discussions from the course leader, course administrator, and external examiner. 

Timeline: The academic year from Sept 2023 to June 2024.

🔥 Fuel: Gradually revealed mysteries and clues. Drama, chaos, back-stabbing. Side quests and conspiracies. What is going on with group members behind the scenes? Why is going on with the course leader? Why is the radio making those sounds? Is a student dead or is everyone just caught up in the drama? 

📖 Cred: Over-the-top realism

 

Vintage radio. Electric minivan. Doodle group chats. Assignments. Cloud based company promotions. Binaural beats. Resin. 

 

Content Heads-Up: Burglary (brief off page recall). PTSD (brief off page recall). Organized crime. Drug trafficking (brief recall). Childhood poverty, abandonment (brief recall; off page). Murder. Sabotage. War (brief mentions, discussion/topic). 

 

Rep: British. Irish. Second/third generation Bengali British. Chinese British. Second generation Albanian British. Visual impairment. Ambiguous skin tones.

 

📚 Format: Library Hardcover