Spoiled Milk

by Avery Curran

🐣

1/5 ducklings

tl;dr: a school for young girls is decaying, but the real decay is internalized misogyny and homophobia?

I'm going to be honest, I did not like this book. I'll be as kind as I can, but I didn't find much redeeming about it.

I hate it when I don't like a book, and not just because of the effort I made to read it. A novel, especially a debut novel, is so personal and it has a little piece of your soul, so it feels really bad when you receive negative feedback. I never want to shit on another author's work, I wouldn't want someone to do that to me, but I also think it's ok to publicly dislike a book. In the end, this just wasn't the book for me, that's my personal feeling on it, and not a reflection on Avery Curran and the work she put into this story or anyone who enjoys it. If you read this, I hope you like it!

Here's the rundown of the plot: On her eighteenth birthday, Violet falls to her death with only Mademoiselle Lefevre, the young pretty French teacher, as witness. Emily, Violet's best friend, is sure that Mademoiselle pushed her, how else could perfect, graceful, angelic Violet have fallen? This sparks an obsession in Emily that drags her down a dark path and drives a wedge between her and her classmates. Emily, Evelyn, Marion, Sophie, Alice, and Dot hold a seance to talk to Violet, only for her to tell them that something terrible is coming and it's too late for them to leave.

Then the milk starts going bad too quickly, apples that are perfectly fine on the outside are rotting and filled with maggots on the inside, the water from the well they have always used becomes mucky and brackish. And then one of the younger girls dies after eating a dinner that was either spoiled or poisoned.

As their numbers dwindle, the girls band together, trying another seance to contact Violet, who is decidedly unhelpful. Eventually, Sophie can't take it and leaves. The girls find her body in the frozen fountain in the front yard. Mademoiselle dies, finally forcing Emily to understand that she had misplaced her blame for Violet's death.

Things come to a head one night when black rot begins oozing out from the foundations of the school and the few remaining teachers and students turn violent and attack, forcing the girls to make the hardest choices of their lives.

Ok, good things first: I LOVE the American cover of this book, and I'm pretty sure that's the first time I have ever said that with any bit of sincerity. It's pulpy and weird and it stands out on the shelf (or NetGalley, in my case). Serious props to the cover designer, you nailed it.

The premise is great! A girls' school in rural England is literally rotting from the inside out, turning the milk sour and filling the apples with maggots. A group of students hold a seance to contact their friend who mysteriously fell to her death on her eighteenth birthday and miraculously manage to contact her ghost. It deals with themes of growing up, understanding your sexuality, found family. It checks so many of the boxes I want in my books, so of course i picked it up!

And that's where my enjoyment ended. I wasn't a huge fan of the writing, the book is set in 1928, but there were too many modern turns of phrase to keep me in the time period. The flip side is that there weren't enough period specific phrases to remind me it was 1928, consequently, I kept forgetting it was the 1920s and not the 1820s. There was none of the set dressing necessary to keep me clued into what year it was, and thus the cultural norms of the time.

I didn't particularly like any of the characters, Emily was mean in an irrational way that went beyond being an obnoxious 17 year old, she repeatedly makes dumb decisions within the logic of the world, never learning from her actions until the very end of the book, and even then, only kind of. Evelyn is closed off to the point of absurdity (yes, as someone who is hyper independent, I see the hypocrisy), never once mentioning that the ghost of the friend they contacted, Violet, was trying to possess her and is slowly making her sick.

The other girls seemed more like archetypes than actual characters. Alice is the athlete, Dot is the bubbly young one, Sophie is the friendly one, Marion is the competent peacekeeper. It didn't feel like there was much more to any of them.

And now for my real critique. This was pitched to me as a queer book, NetGalley tagged it that way, as did my library, but almost all of the queer content hinged on toxic internalize homophobia. I realize it's 1928, but there comes a point when historical realism needs to give way to character development and some modern sensibilities. Alice and Dot are clearly dating, but Emily flat out refuses to acknowledge it several times over the course of the book, even when Alice (spoiler alert!) dies to give the rest of the girls, including Dot, a chance to escape. Dot is distraught, but at no point did Emily (or any of the other girls) acknowledge what Alice meant to her.

Violet was obviously sleeping with Mademoiselle, which like, ok, I guess. But Violet actively wields this secret as a weapon to hurt both Emily and Evelyn, who are clearly in love with her. Even after her death, Violet shares this secret with Emily, shaming her for not knowing it herself and causing Emily to feel shame at knowing such a thing about the woman she adores and what it might imply about Emily herself. Violet tells Emily not to tell Evelyn because Evelyn wouldn't like it, causing Emily further shame because if pious, uptight Evelyn would disapprove of something Violet did, it must be an awful act, because of what it implies about Evelyn, and for having to keep a secret from her.

But the part that pushed me over the edge was the relationship between Emily and Evelyn. Their first and only encounter is Evelyn accosting Emily in the apple orchard, berating her, slapping her, then kissing her and giving her a hand job without ever asking permission. And then, to top it off, they literally never speak about it again, they never once acknowledge or discuss their feelings. Emily only references loving Evelyn at the very end of the book in a sort of retrospective, and even then, she says she can't leave because where else would she go and who else could she talk to? It just felt toxic and gross in a way that wasn't fun to read.

I don't mean that queer stories can't have toxic characters or relationships, on the contrary, queer stories should be as robust and complicated as any straight story. It's just none of the toxicity paid off in a satisfying way, it was just toxic to be toxic and didn't particularly serve the story. Queerness was used as a weapon and that's what bothers me.

Emily's queerness doesn't impact the story at all, and I think if a book is pitched to me as a queer book, I expect queerness to actually matter to the plot or character development somehow. It's sort of the difference between a queer story and a story with queer characters. I realize that most of this is my problem, I assumed a lot of things based on that LGBT tag, and I've been reading a lot of feel good queer stories lately, and that probably skewed my expectations. But Emily's queerness didn't matter at all, it didn't even really impact her character arc, by the end of the book, it felt like she was grudgingly queer, and that she really just hated Evelyn less, not liked her more.

Again, not every queer person in a queer story has to accept their sexuality, plenty of people don't and those are important stories that should be told, too. But this book read so much like a YA book that to miss those beats was jarring and unsatisfying.

I feel like it's worth saying again, I personally did not like this book, but that does not mean it was a bad book. Writing a book is hard work, it's a lot of effort and brain power, time management and creativity, not to mention the sometimes literal blood, sweat and tears that go into it. And then you have to put it out into the world where you no longer have control over it and people will read it and judge it and inevitably, someone won't like it and will say so out loud. That can be soul destroying. I think it's a brave thing to put your creative work out there for people to see.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for Avery Curran, even if I didn't like the book. I hope she keeps writing and creating, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

P.S. keep that cover designer on retainer please.

Originally published: March 10, 2026