Review of "A School for Unusual Girls"

"I started a fire and now I'm being punished."

     Kathleen Baldwin's A School for Unusual Girls may feature a finishing school for spies, but its focus gives the story a surprising twist. Miss Georgiana Fitzwilliam is, much to her parents' horror, a scientist. Not only does she launch herself from the window on homemade gliders, but Georgie also may or may not have started work on a new, undetectable invisible ink. So what if the barn burned down in the process? In her eyes, that is no excuse to banish her to the Stranje House School for Unusual Girls. For goodness' sake, the headmistress has a rack in her "discipline room"! When her parents leave without even saying goodbye, Georgie decides to take matters into her own hands and run away. But escape is not as simple as she thought, and when it becomes apparent that her chemistry will be encouraged--and that the rack is only morbid decoration--she realizes life at the Stranje House may not be as horrible as she imagined.

     This book has a very promising premise. A scientifically-minded girl is sent to a "reform school" that claims to practice horrible, barbaric correction techniques, which turns out to be little more than a front to a school for spies. What more could we ask for? Apparently, a lot. Not only does Georgie spend absolutely no time training to pick locks, detect poison, or free herself when tied to a chair, but she insists on falling head-over-heels for the only young man in the area: Lord Wyatt, an undercover agent for the crown and, currently, her lab assistant. At least he has the decency to warn her off, not because he's "no good for her" but because entanglements with a spy are messy at best. And Georgie has the decency to understand and appreciate that--not that it stops her.

     There is, however, a saving grace in all this mess. Georgie spends her time in the lab working on an invisible ink that is impervious to heat, a formula that could have saved her brother's life had it been developed sooner. Partway through the book, she figures it out--only to have everything come crashing down because of a silly mistake. This is where the plot kicks in, sending Georgie and her classmates on a high-stakes rescue mission with all of Europe on the line. For Napoleon's followers are stirring, and if the ink falls into the wrong hands, the king of France could die and Bonaparte could very easily rise again.

     Character-wise, A School for Unusual Girls is both well-done and lacking. Georgie is fleshed out completely, her personality solidified within the first few chapters. Her roommates, on the other hand, are pretty flat. Each of the other girls has some sort of gift, whether it's a persuasive tongue, visions of the future, or an eye for detail that burglars would kill for. This is not explained, and while there are times when it's easy to mix up who does what, these traits are often key indicators of who's talking. Lord Wyatt, on the other hand, is rounded enough to satisfy but provides no reason at all for Georgie to fall in love with him, other than simple attraction. This would be all right if Baldwin hadn't tried to pull off the hate-at-first-sight trope, which fails simply because it's one-sided.

     If this was a movie, it'd probably be rated PG-13. There's romance in the form of kissing, great action, and a good deal of interrogation. Thankfully, most of this takes place out of sight, with the results paraded before our character's eyes. Violence is smart and planned out, even on the part of the villain, which makes things more realistic but also causes things to run a little more smoothly than we might like. It does, however, fit the characters and add to the story. A warning to grammar Nazis: the punctuation in this novel leaves much to be desired.

     I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a story about a female chemist on a quest to stop the return of Napoleon Bonaparte and save the man she loves. Though it partially takes place in a spy school that doesn't teach her spy-like skills, Georgie is a realistic protagonist who actually thinks with her head. And the plot, once it takes off, it's absolutely exciting. The ending suggests that this is the first in a series, which leaves me hopeful about the direction the Stranje House and its inhabitants are going to go. Kathleen Baldwin has done a good job with A School for Unusual Girls, earning it three stars.