On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Renée Winters was still an
ordinary girl. She spent her summers at the beach, had the perfect best
friend, and had just started dating the cutest guy at school. No one she
had ever known had died. . . . But all of that changes when she finds
her parents dead in the redwood forest, in what appears to be a strange
murder. After the funeral, Renée's wealthy grandfather sends her to
Gottfried Academy, a remote boarding school in Maine, where she finds
herself studying subjects like Philosophy, Latin, and the "Crude
Sciences." It's there that she meets Dante Berlin, a handsome and
elusive boy to whom she feels inexplicably drawn. As they grow closer,
strange things begin to happen, but Renée can't stop herself from
falling in love. It's only when she discovers a dark tragedy in
Gottfried's past that she begins to wonder if the Academy and its
students are everything they seem. Little does she know that Dante is
the one hiding a dangerous secret, one that has him fearing for her
life.