Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Finishing School: A Novel
    The Finishing School: A Novel
    The Finishing School: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Finishing School: A Novel

    Written by Joanna Goodman

    Narrated by Andi Arndt

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    In this suspenseful, provocative novel of friendship, secrets, and deceit, a successful writer returns to her elite Swiss boarding school to get to the bottom of a tragic accident that took place while she was a student twenty years earlier.

    How far would you go to uncover the truth?

    One spring night in 1998 the beautiful Cressida Strauss plunges from a fourth-floor balcony at the Lycée Internationale Suisse with catastrophic consequences. Loath to draw negative publicity to the school, a bastion of European wealth and glamour, officials quickly dismiss the incident as an accident, but questions remain: Was it a suicide attempt? Or was Cressida pushed? It was no secret that she had a selfish streak and had earned as many enemies as allies in her tenure at the school. For her best friend, scholarship student Kersti Kuusk, the lingering questions surrounding Cressida's fall continue to nag long after she leaves the Lycée.

    Kersti marries and becomes a bestselling writer, but never stops wondering about Cressida's obsession with the Helvetian Society—a secret club banned years before their arrival at the school—and a pair of its members who were expelled. When Kersti is invited as a guest to the Lycée's 100th Anniversary, she begins probing the cover-up, unearthing a frightening underbelly of lies and abuse at the prestigious establishment. And in one portentous moment, Kersti makes a decision that will connect her to Cressida forever and raise the stakes dangerously high in her own desire to solve the mystery and redeem her past.

    An unputdownable read as clever as it is compelling, The Finishing School offers a riveting glimpse into a privileged, rarefied world in which nothing is as it appears.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 11, 2017
    ISBN9780062660701
    Author

    Joanna Goodman

    Joanna Goodman is the author of the bestselling novels The Forgotten Daughter, The Home for Unwanted Girls,and The Finishing School. Originally from Montreal, she now lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.

    More audiobooks from Joanna Goodman

    Related to The Finishing School

    Related audiobooks

    Contemporary Women's For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Crimes of the Heart

      Nov 5, 2016

      Like many of his novels, Spanish author Javier Marías’ new book, Thus Bad Begins, isn’t exactly a mystery, though it is mysterious. Here, the 65-year-old perennial Nobel favorite tells the story of Juan de Vere, a young man working for a film directo

      1 min read

    • Article

      Book The Good Sister

      Oct 29, 2020

      Laced with her usual quirky humour, sass and darkly charming tone, Australian author Sally Hepworth brings her latest tome – tipped to be her breakout – to shelves. Delivering a knockout novel about the lies that bind two sisters, Hepworth tells the

      1 min read

    • Article

      Best-sellers

      Feb 25, 2018

      Rankings for hard-cover books sold in Southern California, as reported by selected book stores: ___ Fiction 1."The Great Alone," by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's: $28.99) A family discovers it is in peril after the father, a returning Vietnam War POW,

      1 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Jul 9, 2020

      Hilderbrand’s latest novel is perfect for cosy weekend reading. This time she focuses on former lovers who now lead separate lives but share an island idyll once a year. Captivating and bittersweet. (Available Jul. 23) Inseparable twins Stella and

      1 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Sophia Shalmiyev

      Dec 20, 2019

      Let us begin at the natural home of all the white-men-are-garbage controversies and go right to the crotch area. The post A Year in Reading: Sophia Shalmiyev appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Inventions of Witches

      Oct 30, 2017

      The Inventions of Witches
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

      Jun 10, 2020

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      The afterlife is an infinity of custom shelving, where everything you have ever loved has a perfect place, including things that don’t fit on shelves, like the weeping willow from your parents’ backyard, or an old boyfriend, exactly as he was in your

      9 min read

    • Article

      Coming To Grief

      Apr 3, 2022

      Coming To Grief
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Book for the Moment: On Helen Weinzweig’s ‘Basic Black with Pearls’

      Jun 1, 2018

      This post was produced in partnership with Bloom, a literary site that features authors whose first books were published when they were 40 or older. 1. In our current moment, a chorus of “nasty women” has flooded social media with grievances. Unfortu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Jenny Diski's Curious Women

      Jan 25, 2018

      Jenny Diski's Curious Women
      5 min read

    • Article

      Buried Deep

      Oct 28, 2020

      Buried Deep
      6 min read

    • Article

      Sigrid Nunez

      Sep 15, 2017

      During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khme

      23 min read

    • Article

      The Paper Wasp

      Jun 3, 2019

      The Paper Wasp
      13 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Finishing School

    4/5

    65 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This is a tough one to review. I'll read anything boarding school-related, and I was especially intrigued by the Swiss boarding school setting, since that is somewhat more rare in fiction than the British or American boarding school. Goodman did a pretty good job describing some of the aspects of that setting, and the way the students act, but I could have done with more. I have an insatiable appetite for these kinds of details! I think the secrets and mystery were done well (unlike a lot of readers, I had no idea what was really going on until it was revealed). It of course reminds me a bit of The Secret History, in terms of the setting and the basic set-up, with a non-rich kid entering into this elite setting as an outsider, and being slowly drawn into some messed up stuff. My problem with this book was the main character, Kersti, and particularly the sections before she really starts to investigate the past (the chapters alternate between Kersti in the 90s at boarding school and Kersti in the present in Toronto). Kersti really irritated me. I had no sympathy for her at all. We are clearly meant to have sympathy for her, and she is described in a way that suggests pretty strongly that we're supposed to cheer for her by the end because she has grown so much. But in fact, her behavior is disturbingly obsessive and juvenile, and Goodman puts it down to "tenacity." he is ruining her marriage because of her obsession with having a baby, apparently solely because she wants to fit in with the expat Estonian community and her horrible family? I mean, I'm sure there are people who function like this, but it was deeply irritating to me to have to be inside of the head of a married professional woman in her late 30s who cares more about "fitting in" than anything else. She never once mentions that she likes babies or children, never talks about them at all, in fact, except to say that she needs to have one so she can fit in. Also, her obsession with her best friend Cressida is very over-the-top, but the author tries to make it justify it by describing Kersti as "tenacious." Seriously? And her husband very quickly is down with all of it? It's fine if characters do sick things, but that has to be part of the story. Here, we're apparently not supposed to think there's really anything weird about Kersti's behavior. It's all justified as being "strong" and "going after what she wants." She just really wants a kid. You know, so she can feel like she fits in with her awful family. Really not the kind of girl power I can get behind.Another odd and distracting thing about this book: Kersti's family is Estonian, and Goodman mentions it so many times that it's perplexing. It feels like Goodman, like Kersti, started writing a book about Estonians, and then decided to write something totally different. Except Goodman couldn't bring herself to throw out the stuff she wrote about Estonians. It feels totally random and makes no sense. It contributes nothing to the story and is jarringly out of place. I am happy to learn about other people and cultures, but all Goodman does is relentlessly mention that her family is Estonian. You don't actually learn anything at all about Estonians; all we get from her characterization of the family is that they are racist, sexist, and extremely insular. So the whole Estonian thing contributes nothing at all to the story, and is actually distracting, and probably offensive to actual Estonian people.
    • 4/5
      A quick read toggling between present day and 20 years prior. While I get that development of the character was key, I would have preferred if the story was more about the boarding school than her.
    • 2/5
      This mystery which flips between the past and present reads like an abridged version of what could have been a good book. The mystery part of the story that takes place in the past in a Swiss boarding school is interesting. The detective part of the story that takes place in the present is not. The main character (detective) is dealing with infertility issues and has a self-identity issue related to her family and ethnicity. It's hard to know how much of this is the author's issue or if it's meant to give some depth to the character. Either way, I found it distracting and mostly irrelevant to the good part of the story. The dialogue between the character and her husband never strikes me as realistic. They go from lovey-dovey to full out argument and silence with trite dialogue. (It is totally possible that the dialogue issue is cultural, but I don't know.) Anyway, I didn't like the present-day story, not just for the relationship issues but also for how the protagonist hops around on a plane at a moment's notice (after her husband complains about money) and visits all the people she perceives as the key witnesses and gets them to readily admit to deep secrets or info. Of course, she misses the most important witnesses until the very end when she risks her life a la Nancy Drew.
      If the book was just about the finishing school story in a linear timeline, fleshed out about that world, and THEN in a "part 2" went into the future to solve the mystery without the personal issues, I might have enjoyed the book more. Maybe.
      Quick read, okay mystery (some obvious clues), mediocre results.
    • 5/5
      I liked everything about this! I was sure the ending was not heading in a good direction... nice work, Joanna Goodman!!
    • 5/5
      I was thinking I could guess what was going to happen but although I was somewhat close the ending was still a surprise. Goodman does the same thing in her newer novel---going back and forth in time. This was a somewhat complicated story and Goodman pulls so many characters into the story that she manages to provide enough detail about that she amazes me. How can you write with so many twists and turns and keep it all straight?? Whew!
    • 4/5
      The Lycée is celebrating its 100th anniversary and not only has Kersti Kuusk been invited back to the elite boarding school in Switzerland where she spent four years of her life, she has been selected as one of their "One Hundred Women of the Lycée." But for Kersti this opens up an old wound. Almost twenty years ago Kersti's best friend, Cressida, fell from her fourth-floor balcony just before graduation. This was quickly deemed an accident and the whole thing was over and done with before any publicity. But Kersti can't help but dig around especially with the anniversary coming up and after receiving a letter from an old friend of theirs from Lycée. Kersti never forgot Cressida's obsession with a secret club that was banned years before their arrival, a secret club that had two of its members expelled from the school - something that had never happened before or since. Kersti is determined to get answers about the club and about what happened to her best friend that night long ago.

      I could not get enough of this book! I love reading about boarding schools. The chapters go back and forth between past and present and I did enjoy both, but there's always something about the past that makes me like it just a little bit more. I loved the setting - the beautiful mountains, the crisp air, the light powdery snow. I liked the twists and turns, the friendships and the suspense.
    • 4/5
      Suspenseful story of life and abuse in a girl's boarding school.