THE CURSE OF GREAT WINTER ACADEMY

This thrilling mashup of boarding school, supernatural, and scary story tropes is the latest addition to the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

As a ninth grader at the Great Winter Academy for the Extraordinarily Gifted Students, you, Mildred Mendelson, have been chosen by the enigmatic Society of Misfits to break the Impossible Curse. You, your best friend, Annie, and new kid Lyle (who uses they/them pronouns) have until the next full moon to retrieve a stolen artifact from your rival school and thereby break the Curse—or die. Will your abilities to communicate with and animate dolls, Annie’s mimicry skills, and Lyle’s facility with water be up to the task? Maybe you should try to break the Alternative Curse with your close friend and crush, Arthur, instead? Your success depends on the choices you make as the twisty plot unfurls. This plot-driven adventure maintains a brisk pace, with readers making decisions every few pages. The 19 different endings include outcomes such as death, breaking the Impossible Curse, exposing the secret society, and becoming the society’s new Alpha. The characters’ motivations and allegiances change depending on what readers choose, but the supernatural powers remain constant. Those occult abilities plus scary (but never gory) elements—ghosts, creepy dolls and clowns, Zombie Cats—reward multiple readings. Occasional grayscale illustrations provide visual support; in them, most characters present white, while Lyle has dark skin and curly black hair.

A page-turning, spine-tingling addition to a perennially popular series.