The Oxford Inheritance

April 1, 2016

American Cassie Blackwell is a new student at Oxford University, but she is there for more than a first-tier education. Cassie is hiding a lot of secrets about who she is and how she got there. Mostly, the teen is hiding that her mother went to Oxford before she fled to America to have a baby. Her mother also went insane and killed herself when Cassie was 14. While digging to uncover her mother's past and find out her father's identity, Cassie also begins to unearth a dark secret held at the university itself. After her roommate commits suicide, the protagonist becomes embroiled in a greater mystery with complicated layers, including a secret society and centuries of power, intrigue, and murder that are all seemingly embedded within the very foundation of Raleigh College at Oxford. While trying to investigate and simultaneously manage the attentions of men who may not be all that they seem, Cassie discovers that the dark arts are playing a role in her life. The obvious holes in the plot of this gothic mystery and the ever increasing necessity to suspend disbelief are far outweighed by the gripping story line, magnetic characters, and wonderfully detailed description of student life at Oxford. VERDICT A solid choice for collections everywhere, especially those looking for page-turning thrillers with teen appeal.-Jake Pettit, Enka Schools, Istanbul

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2015

Novelist/screenwriter McDonald, who has written USA Today and international best sellers under a pen name, submits this dark-edged story about American student Cassandra Blackwell, at Oxford to uncover her mother's secret past. Instead, she finds a shadowy and murderous society with its claws in the world. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2015
Mystery and horror intertwine in a gothic tale with modern accents. Cassandra Blackwell's year abroad at Oxford finds the American well outside her element. No matter, though: she's not there to study but to find out the truth about her mother, whose mental illness and suicide have roots in a secret society on campus. McDonald plays with reader expectations, pivoting from one mystery to another. Is the society real or a hoax? Either answer would indicate that half the people in her life are lying, an unsettling prospect. The historical campus trope gets some clever nose-tweaking here; an eerie, winding staircase terminates in a card-swipe lock, and a student poring over his Moleskine notebook has cut a compartment inside to hide a cellphone. Travel far enough into the countryside, though, and that "connectivity" is stripped away. A chase on foot is especially frightening given that nobody can get bars on a phone to call for help. What Cassie learns--about both of her parents and about who is and is not a true friend--leads her to take a bold risk to end the perceived curse hanging over the school. McDonald has done the same thing in a sense, breathing some new life into a well-used genre. If the ending is a bit pat and sudden, it's forgivable given the ride leading up to it. And while it seems unlikely, the potential for a sequel is there, and ripe with possibility. A story just right for a dark and stormy night. Scary and good fun.

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