Leda and the Swan: A Novel

This raw campus story offers a compelling commentary on the dark sides of sororities, highlighting how from outside they can seem like a place of belonging, a place where everyone can thrive while the reality is much grimmer. Leda and the Swan also discusses important subjects like consent, sexual abuse, and how the party culture in college can be incredibly dangerous, but sadly the readers will be left wanting more as there is not enough substance to those discussions.

Leda is a girl who wants above all to fit in, to appease her sisters, and hopefully to find love. However, her pretty average college experience is shattered after a fateful Halloween party where one of her colleagues goes missing. Waking up with a busted lip and dirty feet, Leda realizes she can’t remember much from the night prior except for the fact that she left with Ian, her crush, merely minutes after speaking with the now-missing girl. Her obsession with finding out what happened that night will slowly make her feel alienated from everyone in her life – the party scene and her sisters seeming shallow all of the sudden, and her suspicions on Ian’s involvement in Charlotte’s disappearance growing bigger and bigger with each passing day.

While the mystery was prolonged for way too long, this is still an entertaining book that fans of Megan Abbott and Wolitzer’s Sleepwalking would enjoy.