Girls With Sharp Sticks, Book 1

As GIRLS WITH SHARP STICKS begins, the 12 girls in Innovations Academy's current class are just four months from graduation. An elite boarding school for girls set in rural Colorado, its students are selected for their beauty and temperament and the curriculum is centered around manners, modesty, gardening, flower arranging, and cooking. Upon graduation, the girls will be "placed" with men looking for beautiful and dutiful young wives When not in class, their every move is watched by the always threatening Guardian Bose, a man who can walk unannounced into their bedrooms. If a girl appears "too spirited" or acts out in any way, she's sent for "impulse control therapy." None of the girls knows exactly what this is, as any memories of the therapy are erased as soon as it's completed. Philomena Rhodes is one of the troublesome girls, always skirting the rules. On a rare outing outside the school, she meets a boy named Jackson and they begin meeting secretly. This taste of freedom changes everything for Mena and she begins to question her life at Innovations. Why hasn't she been able to see or talk to her parents since she arrived? What's in the "vitamins" Guardian Bose forces them to take each night? Most important, what really happens when rebellious girls are sent to "impulse control therapy"? When her friend Lennon Rose vanishes, Mena doesn't believe the school when they say she's gone back to her parents. Searching Lennon's room, she finds a violent poem titled "Girls With Sharp Sticks" that talks of girls taking action (including murder) to set themselves free from the men who dominate them. Reading the poem is the tipping point for Mena and her friends, as they decide the only way they'll be able to take back control of their own lives is to escape from Innovations. But before they do, Mena wants to find out what's been going on behind the locked door of the school laboratory.