School Spirits: Review of Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

A boarding school is the perfect setting for a haunting. And an all-girls boarding school in the 1920s is just asking for spooky happenings. But what happens when the thing you’re most scared of isn’t the ghosts, it’s confronting the truth about your own feelings?

This is the basic premise of Avery Curran’s debut novel, Spoiled Milk. An all-girls’ school is plagued by a series of mysterious deaths, and a group of students uncovers an entity far more dangerous than strict schoolmistresses. This atmospheric novel is sure to please those in search of some dark academia this spring.

Huge thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for providing an ARC copy of Spoiled Milk for review. Minor spoilers ahead!

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Spoiled Milk Synopsis

Spoiled Milk

by Avery Curran

Spoiled Milk

Horror

by Avery Curran

Published 03/10/2026

Pages 336

Publisher Doubleday

ISBN: 9780385551595

Details & Buy Options

It’s 1928, and the upper class of the Briarley School for Girls is viewing their final year at the school with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. But when Violet, the school’s most popular girl, mysteriously falls to her death one evening, it sets off a chain of events that convinces Emily Locke and her friends that there is something sinister afoot at the school they’ve called home over the past 6 years.

Emily is sure that Violet’s death was more than an accident. She believes that her best friend, who had the ability to bend all manner of people to her will, was murdered.

However, what starts out as a straightforward investigation turns out to be anything but ordinary, and Emily and her friends discover that something less than human may be haunting the halls of Briarley, intent on keeping the girls at the school through deadly means. Soon, spoiled food and odd occurrences turn into a mounting body count, and the girls realize they may never be able to leave.

Armed with a passing knowledge of spiritualism and frenemy Evelyn’s budding abilities as a medium, Emily will take on beings beyond her wildest imaginings, and she’ll be forced to confront her own repression and the circumstances she found herself in long before any supernatural presence made itself known.

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Strengths

A Chilling Look at Supernatural Occurrences and Repressed Teens

A period piece with gothic undertones is a pretty perfect mashup for a dark academia horror novel. The atmosphere of Spoiled Milk is one of its biggest strengths; I found myself genuinely unsettled throughout multiple moments throughout the story. The setting of Briarley and its seclusion lend themselves incredibly well to the haunting aspects of the tale.

But the things I had loved about Briarley, the things that had made it something like home, were falling away piece by piece, until there was nothing left except for my friends, whom it seemed I had doomed by begging them to stay. It was an irony that didn’t bear thinking about.

I was also a big fan of the characters and their relationship dynamics. Both the friendships and tension between the girls make for a far more interesting read than other stories of the same nature.

The various personality traits, like Emily’s stubbornness, Dot’s anxiousness, and Marion’s levelheadedness, all converged to create a realistic group of friends who have forged bonds over time through the necessity of their circumstances of living at an isolated boarding school for the majority of the year.

It made their connections feel more grounded, and gave me a much more emotional response when they experienced anything scary.

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Weakness

The one aspect that I struggled with while reading Spoiled Milk was the pacing. While I do agree that a novel with this sort of gothic tone tends to be a slower burn than another genre, however there were multiple scenes and portions in the first half of the story that felt too laggy.

That said, once the supernatural occurrences become more frequent and the danger ramps up, this is a genuinely effective horror novel, as well as an exploration of sexual repression in an era such as the 1920s. The latter third of the book, in particular, is chock full of gothic horror, full of dread and disturbing imagery that’s sure to appeal to fans of the genre.

Final Thoughts on Spoiled Milk

On the surface, Spoiled Milk is a story about a haunted girls’ school with gothic undertones. But below that surface lies a more complicated tale of sexual discovery and repression, and the secrets we keep from even those closest to us.

The novel tackles themes of friendship in close quarters and doesn’t shy away from the difficulties that come with not being allowed to explore one’s own feelings as a teenager in a strict school setting.

The haunting may be the main attraction, but readers will stay for the character arcs and chapters fraught with tension. It’s a captivating and eerie debut, and I’m here for whatever genre Curren decides to tackle next.

Spoiled Milk publishes March 10th!

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