*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity.
Caution - This review does contain spoilers.
Title: The Headmaster's List
Author: Melissa de la Cruz
Genre: Young Adult Crime Thriller
Rating: ★★★★
The Headmaster’s List centres around a car crash involving
four high school students. One is killed, one seriously injured and one of them
is arrested for death by dangerous driving. Spencer was seriously injured in the
crash and her ex-boyfriend Ethan is the one facing the charges but Spencer is
not convinced he is guilty and decides to work to prove his innocence, despite
having no memory of the events. She enlists the help of Jackson, Ethan’s best
friend, and together they work to try and uncover the truth of the crash.
The Headmaster’s List is a really interesting concept and it
is delivered through a fast-paced story. I wanted to love the book and it did
keep my interest but overall, it just wasn’t executed as well as I would have
liked. The plot seemed to move quite far away from reality in a lot of aspects and
this was disappointing. For example, simple details about the crash seemed to
be completely ignored by the police and the lawyers involved in the case and a
teenager run true-crime podcast was able to get hold of confidential police documents
that they wouldn’t even allow one of the victims to see. Spencer also recovers
from a traumatic brain injury and returns to school only a week later and she
is expected to recover from PTSD brought on by the crash without any proper
therapy and just with the use of a therapy dog.
The narrative is broken up with extracts from other things
which provide more context and support the world-building within the story.
This includes podcast transcripts, extracts from the police report and extracts
from Spencer’s bullet journal and it overall was a real asset to the story.
I did really like the protagonist, Spencer. She was a really
likeable character who was well written and has really good morals, evidenced
by her determination to prove her ex-boyfriend’s innocence despite him cheating
on her for over a year. The character of Jackson also had real depth to him but
– apart from therapy dog Ripley who has my whole heart – that’s about as far as
likeable characters go. The Headmaster character gave me beyond creepy vibes
(framed pictures of his favourite students in his office is a red flag and don’t
even get me started on the elitist list of his), Spencer’s parents make practically
no appearances in the story and the Detective character gives police everywhere
a bad name. I did think his behaviour hinted towards some kind of involvement
in the accident or in the threats towards Spencer but it never went anywhere. There
are a lot of other characters introduced during the story which can be a lot to
get your head around. The author’s intention may have been to build the tension
by adding in additional potential suspects but I think for any of them to be
considered viable suspects they needed to be properly introduced and developed
rather than just mentioned in passing, like in the case of Ethan’s stalker. I
would also have liked the character of Olivia to play a more prominent role in
the story. Despite being Spencer’s best friend, she’s scarcely mentioned for
most of the narrative, so much so that I’d even forgotten she existed until
Spencer forgot her birthday party towards the end of the book.
One of the aspects of the story I struggled with is the fact
that we find out very little about Chris, the teenager who died in the crash,
and what we do find out doesn’t make us warm to him as he’s a pretty dodgy
character. Partially this may be down to the fact that the crash opens the book
so we don’t encounter the character at all when he was alive but it ultimately
made it difficult for us to truly care about getting justice for him, as harsh
as that may sound.
We do have non-binary representation through the character
of Tabby but it honestly felt like Tabby was only pointedly identified as
nonbinary as part of a diversity box ticking exercise. They are misgendered multiple
times during the narrative and it’s disappointing this wasn’t spotted during
the editing process.
There are big twists in the closing chapters and I won’t lie,
it did make me scream and threaten to lock the book in my cellar to think about
what it did. I was infuriated and it did ultimately ruin the book for me. I considered
how to write this review without including any spoilers but ultimately as it
was the twists which decreased my star rating, I thought it only right that I acknowledge
them. Two of the big twists were predictable from very early on in the story but
the third twist ultimately didn’t make sense. Nick being the person guilty of
threatening Spencer was predictable as he was always a shifty character and
from the opening chapters I could have told you that it was going to end up
being Spencer that had been driving the car but it’s Jackson’s involvement in
the car accident and his actions in the closing chapters which infuriated me
beyond belief. Although I had considered Jackson’s involvement in the accident
at the very beginning of the story, the character development we saw in him,
the blossoming relationship between him and Spencer and the focus on him not
being like his dad (a criminal serving a long prison sentence) really veered me
away from this theory and made me hope the book would follow a different
direction. It was ultimately really disappointing that they chose to make the
character do a complete 180 just so it was something the readers didn’t see
coming.
In the closing chapter we also get hints towards Spencer forgiving
and reuniting with Ethan which was beyond frustrating and really went against Spencer’s
character development. Whilst taking the blame for the accident might have been
a very nice thing to do (if not just completely bonkers on Ethan’s part but don’t
even get me started on that), it does not excuse him cheating on her.
Overall, The
Headmaster’s List is a really interesting concept but it was disappointing overall.
It was an easy read which did hold my attention and I did find myself desperate
to have the crime solved but the book was ultimately taken in a direction which
I don’t think was in keeping with the characters or story overall so I can’t
rank it any higher than 3*.
The Headmaster's List by Melissa de la Cruz will be published on 2nd March.
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