Special Topics in Calamity Physics
By Marisha Pessl
Penguin Publishing Group
The last of my deep Pessl dive, we meet Blue, a high school senior who’s been following her father around the country as he chases teaching jobs at third-rate universities. They finally land in a town where they can have some stability. That’s where Blue meets Hannah, a beautiful, mysterious film studies teacher who invites Blue to join her special cadre of prep school students, a tight clique that begrudgingly welcomes this interloper. Then, on a last-minute camping trip, Hannah gets murdered. Was it Blue? Or is her death related to the drowning of a former lover at a costume party she’d thrown? Too many things seem connected to be coincidence, and it’s now up to Blue to figure out what the heck’s going on. I really enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it.