The Chandler Legacies is a moving and heartfelt boarding school story

Acclaimed author Abdi Nazemian’s latest young adult novel The Chandler Legacies, tells the story of five students at a boarding school who come together as members of an exclusive society focused on writing known as The Circle.

The Chandler Legacies tells the stories of each of The Circle members in turn. Beth is an anxious townie who compulsively pulls her hair. Her former roommate Brunson hoped to start over fresh at Chandler after caring for her sick mother but finds herself facing new problems at school.

Ramin is new to Chandler and America, having grown up in Iran, and heartbroken after breaking up with his first boyfriend. Spence wants to be an actress but is trying to figure out how to stand out on her own from her privileged upbringing. Freddy is an aspiring Olympic pole vaulter struggling to figure out who he wants to be.

The Chandler Legacies follows each of The Circle members as they learn more about themselves and each other through their writing. As each of their stories unfolds, they expose truths about themselves and the school.

The novel interrogates the complicated world of boarding schools. It shows the fictional Chandler in all its facets, including the abuse, hazing, and excessive privilege, as well as the benefits of close friendships and academic and creative freedom.

Boarding school stories are their kind of subgenre within young adult fiction, but The Chandler Legacies makes its mark thanks to Nazemian’s special stamp.

Nazemian wisely makes many smart structural choices, setting the book in 1999 to highlight the culture of silence around sexual assault without recent movements like #MeToo coming into play.

Furthermore, by using The Circle, and writing itself, as a structure to explore Chandler’s many facets, Nazemian smartly develops his central characters while also exposing the school’s dark secrets. After all, “Chandler is a place with endless secrets and no secrets at the same time.”

One other remarkable facet of these secrets–queer identity. Aside from Spence, each member of The Circle is LGBTQ and has to reckon with their identity in their own way, slowly finding their voices through their writing and their friendships with each other.

Of course, Beth, Brunson, Ramin, Spence, and Freddy also contend with racial, ethnic, and class identities, too. It’s a subtle kind of representation that never feels preachy but instead simply creates well-rounded, real-world characters that are refreshing to see on the page.

Get your copy of The Chandler Legacies wherever books are sold today.