Book Review: Wildalone by Krassi Zourkova
Talented pianist and bright student Thea Slavin leaves the familiar confines of family and her Bulgarian homeland for the opportunity of study at prestigious Princeton University in the United States. Compounding the normal cultural shocks of studying abroad in an unfamiliar land, Thea discovers that she has chosen to accept an opportunity from the same school her older sister attended years past, an era mired in family secrets. Thea learns that this sister mysteriously died while at Princeton, leaving a hole in her parent’s lives about which they refuse to speak. Braving the discomfort that the unfamiliarity of the Princeton campus brings with its upper class American culture and distant memories of the embarrassing unsolved crime involving the elder Slavin daughter, Thea turns full focus to her piano/music studies and the strange draw a course in Greek mythology and its professor holds for her. As she tries to settle into her new life and avoid associations with the past history of her sister with the campus, Thea is pushed rapidly into preparing for major recitals and the prospects of college romances.