Publication: July 1st 2014 by G.P. Putnam's Sons
Source: Library Book
Goodreads Summary: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane comes a chilling mystery—Prep meets The Crucible.
It’s senior year at St. Joan’s Academy, and school is a pressure cooker. College applications, the battle for valedictorian, deciphering boys’ texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together. Until they can’t.
First it’s the school’s queen bee, Clara Rutherford, who suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class. Her mystery illness quickly spreads to her closest clique of friends, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joan’s buzzes with rumor; rumor blossoms into full-blown panic.
Soon the media descends on Danvers, Massachusetts, as everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Or are the girls faking? Only Colleen—who’s been reading The Crucible for extra credit—comes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago . . .
Inspired by true events—from seventeenth-century colonial life to the halls of a modern-day high school—Conversion casts a spell. With her signature wit and passion, New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe delivers an exciting and suspenseful novel, a chilling mystery that raises the question, what’s really happening to the girls at St. Joan’s?
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My Thoughts:
This book was really weird. I picked it up at the library on a whim, expecting a young adult book with a paranormal twist. This book was nothing like I thought it would be.
It took me until about a third of the way in to start to take an interest in the storyline. Partly this was because it was difficult for me to keep up with the alternating point of views. And partly it was because it was just plain boring in the beginning. I did start to like the alternating views and found myself interested in both storylines independently; however, the storylines never join together which is very odd. The whole time I was searching for when I thought the storylines would converge, but they never do which left me wondering why Howe even told the story of Ann Putnam. After finishing the book, Howe writes what inspired the plot and how she discovered the story of Ann Putnam and found it to have many parallels to a story happening at the time with girls falling ill at a private school, just like St. Joan's in the book. But I'm with Howe's students that she also wrote about -- I see no parallel to the two storylines and am confused why she thought it was a good idea to include them both in this book. I think the book would've been much better if Howe had only written about Colleen and her experiences, although I think I still would've given it the same rating.
Ann's point of view was difficult to understand in the beginning because it's written in such an early time without any explanation of some of the terms. It took me a few times of reading her point of view before I understood that the name "Goody" was used as a salutation like how "Mr." or "Mrs." would be today. At first I thought everyone just had the same name. Which they do actually. There are multiple Marys and Bettys in the story which made it even more confusing for me but eventually I got a handle on everything.
I did like the writing style of it mostly. Howe is good with keeping actions in with dialogue which is something some authors struggle with. However I did think it was a bit annoying and unrealistic that nearly all of Howe's characters had the habit of biting on their knuckles/nails/pens, etc. Not everyone puts things in their mouth for a "contemplative chew." Just saying. Also, I thought Howe might actually be British when I was first reading this. She uses some British terminology such as "sorted." I've also never heard of homeroom being called "advisory" so I assumed this was a British term as well. Maybe it's just a term used in Catholic schools? I'm not sure. I couldn't figure it out on Google.
And, finally, the ending was a bit meh. I kept thinking and hoping that this book would have a paranormal element to it like it alluded to. But there is none. It's left a bit ambiguous, especially whether the entire situation involved a certain character or not, and the entire book left me with the thought of "Well, what was the point of this?" I don't think every single book needs to have a point or a moral necessarily. But there's always something I glean from it such as it being a nice romance book, or it brought something new to my mind. But this book didn't have anything. It was just a retelling of an actual event with the parallel story Howe thought was great (which wasn't). It's really just a nonfiction book in fiction book's clothing.
Likes: I became interested in both POVs independently. Writing style.
Dislikes: Boring in the beginning. Alternating POVs was difficult to get into. Alternating POVs never converged or had anything to do with each other really. First POV from 1700s was difficult to understand at first because there's no explanation of terminology used then. Parts of the characterization.
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