Mark Vogel is like the older brother Stefan Riley never had, until one day he disappears, and Stefan has to adapt to life without him. But, one year later, when he runs into a girl who looks near-identical to Mark, Stefan becomes obsessed. He discovers that other boys have disappeared, too, dozens over the years, most of them students of the Royal College of Saint Almsworth, many of them troubled or unruly before their disappearance.
What is happening to these boys? Who are the handful of women on campus who bear a striking resemblance to some of those who went missing? And what is the connection to the mysterious Dorley Hall?
Stefan works hard to get into the Royal College for one reason and one reason only: to find out exactly what happened to the women who live at Dorley Hall, and to get it to happen to him, too.
A closeted trans girl attempts to infiltrate a secret underground forced feminisation programme.
Content note: this story engages with some reasonably dark topics, including but not limited to torture, manipulation, dysphoria, nonconsensual surgery, and kidnapping. While it isn't intended to be a dark or dystopian story, the perspective characters are carrying a lot of baggage, and the exploration of the premise might be triggering for trans readers.
I just don't know where to begin in my review of the groundbreaking trans novel Welcome to Dorley Hall; I've simply read nothing like it before. It does have a dystopian feel but it also feels very current and realistic and even though I've turned the final page, the characters are still fluttering around in my head.
I absolutely loved the main character of Stefan; he was devastated when his friend Mark disappeared and his spidey sense went on high alert when he bumped into a girl in the supermarket who reminded him of Mark. Determined to find out what happened to Mark, Stefan follows in Mark's footsteps to college and uncovers a secret group who are turning men into women.
Stefan finally lets down his guard and looks deep inside himself and sees an opportunity to become the woman he has always wanted to be. The only problem is, the men in the programme have all wronged women and Stefan is just too nice to do anything like that, so once he gets in, he has to put on an act to stay in.
Well, consider my thoughts well and truly provoked! I thought it was rather ingenious to punish men by turning them into women but it also made me realise that it's the women who are trapped in men's bodies who are being punished every single day. I really started to care what happened to Stefan and I was on the edge of my seat every time I thought he was going to be caught out.
Welcome to Dorley Hall is a very intriguing, provocative and powerful novel. I'm really pleased that I have read it as it gave me a glimpse into the mind of a trans girl and I would be interested to see how Stefan's story progresses.
I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
My rating:
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About the author:
Alyson lives in a very small flat in a very large city, and writes fiction with trans themes and characters. Her Twitter is twitter.com/badambulist
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