SuitabookWhere Sleeping Girls Lie
Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
- Reading
- Consider checking in before reading about the serious themes, then pause if needed around frightening or assault-related material. Afterwards, discuss both the mystery’s clues and how the book handles trust, agency and accountability.
- Themes
- Trust, solidarity and adult responsibility: Teenagers investigate and band together around serious threats while responsible adults fail to believe them or are affected by conflicts of interest. The book appears to value solidarity and loyalty, but sympathetic characters also commit crimes and harm others or the community.
- Identity and belonging: Sade is a Nigerian British Muslim girl at an international boarding school with a multi-ethnic, multi-religious cast; queer characters are portrayed positively. The book presents this favourably.
- Grief and mental distress: Sade enters the school after her father’s death and is described as experiencing panic attacks, night terrors and complex PTSD, including intrusive thoughts of violence and suicide. These experiences are presented as part of Sade’s situation and emotional life within the mystery, rather than as a simple character flaw.
- Worth knowing
- Give particular thought to whether the reader is ready for murder, suicide, animal death, sexual assault and rape, drink-spiking, panic attacks, night terrors, alcohol and drug references. Assault and rape are described as impactful though mostly off-page.