Insecure, shy, and rather sheltered, eleven-year-old Dylis Rattenbury idolized her self-confident neighbor Victoria Corcoran, who always seemed to know just what she wanted, and how to go about getting it. More than anything, Dylis wanted Victoria to consider her a friend, and to say so, but although she did just what the other girl told her to, somehow it never seemed to happen. When the two girls are sent to a boarding school in upstate New York together, the trend continues, as Dylis falls in with all of Victorian's plans, joining her secret club - the Victorians - and defending her use of "The Black Book," even though she doesn't enjoy performing the deeds it prescribes. But when Victoria seems to turn on Scarlett - Dylis and Victoria's roommate, and one of the four Victorians - Dylis' long-simmering resentment boils over, and an unexpected confrontation develops...

Published in 1972, and long out of print, Barbara Brooks Wallace's Victoria is a book I would most likely never have happened upon, or chosen to pick up, had it not turned up on a list of school stories - a genre I am currently exploring. I can't say that I found it wildly appealing - this is a low three star rating, I think - but I'm not sorry to have read it. Dylis is an interesting character, in that her observations of the world around her, and the people in it, are not always entirely accurate. I think I would have preferred if the 'truth' about Victoria had unfolded a little more organically, rather than seeing it dumped all at once in Dylis' lap by Miss Lawrence - too much of a deus ex machina for me - as it made the conclusion feel a little rushed. All in all, an interesting book, but more of a young person's 'problem novel,' than a school story. ( )