CONVERSION- And you thought your high school experience was hard.

Let's be honest - we all judge books by their covers. Conversion has one of those covers that just screams "read me." On top of that amazing cover art, this book is about a girl who lives in present-day Salem, Massachusetts (yes, that Salem), and the narrative flips back and forth between the real-life characters who inspired The Crucible and the fictional girls living in Danvers, MA. Sounds good, right?


Colleen and her friends attend St. Joan's Academy, which has a reputation of the graduating high-achieving students who make it into the most selective schools in the country. But the school starts gaining a different notoriety when several of the girls in the school, including the queen bee Clara Rutherford, begin to come down with strange ticks and illnesses. As events unfold, Colleen can't help but notice the connections between the chaos taking place at St. Joan's and that of the Salem witch trials. Are the girls just succumbing to the stress of college acceptance letters, or is there something darker at work in Danvers?

I loved the fact that this book switches back and forth from the narrative voice of modern-day Colleen and 17th-century Ann Putnam; I love Arthur Miller's play, and, honestly, who isn't just a little fascinated by the Salem witch trials? The book is also beautifully written - I was on the edge of my seat for most of Ann Putnam's chapters - and Howe does a great job of telling a story while also depicting how sometimes as we transition from one chapter of our lives to the next, friendships can change and become difficult to navigate. Though I admittedly didn't feel completely satisfied with the end of the book, the journey there was awesome.

Note: Katherine Howe is a direct descendent of two women accused of witchcraft in Salem, MA: Elizabeth Proctor (!), who survived, and Katherine Howe, who was not so lucky. She also edited an anthology of real-life accounts of witches titled The Penguin Book of Witches.