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Book Description:

At the world’s most exclusive law school, there’s a secret society rumored to catapult its members to fame and fortune. Everyone is dying to get in . . .

Jeremy Davis is the rising star of his first-year class. He’s got a plum job with the best professor on campus. He’s caught the eye of a dazzling Rhodes scholar named Daphne. But something dark is stirring behind the ivy. When a mysterious club promises success beyond his wildest dreams, Jeremy uncovers a macabre secret older than the university itself. In a race against time, Jeremy must stop an ancient ritual that will sacrifice the lives of those he loves most and blur the lines between good and evil.

In this extraordinary debut thriller, Danny Tobey offers a fascinating glimpse into the rarefied world of an elite New England school and the unthinkable dangers that lie within its gates. He deftly weaves a tale of primeval secrets and betrayal into an ingenious brain teaser that will keep readers up late into the night.

Packed with enigmatic professors, secret codes, hidden tunnels, and sinister villains, The Faculty Club establishes Danny Tobey as this season’s most thrilling new author.

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The Faculty Club by Danny Tobey was a huge disappointment for me. The book description made it sound so interesting and exciting, but I guess I should have read the description with a heaping grain of salt, especially since this is a ‘debut’ thriller. Emphasis on the ‘debut’. The best thing I can say about it is that the story actually starts out pretty interesting (law school + a secret society = win); unfortunately, it quickly unravels when the author tries to be too clever and falls back on gimmickry, while failing to properly develop the characters and plot.

In The Faculty Club, self-described nobody Jeremy Davis seems to be on the verge of hitting the big time – he’s enrolled in the ‘best law school in the world’, he has the patronage of an influential professor, and best of all, he’s being considered for membership by the uber secretive (and powerful) V and D club of the law school. But then, life doesn’t quite turn out the way Jeremy expected – and well, apparently hell hath no fury greater than a spurned first year law student!

I started out liking Jeremy when he was just a smart nobody feeling his way in law school, but then, he got more and more unlikeable as the story progressed. Not only was he was willing to compromise a lot of his principles to basically just join a ‘cool’ Ivy League secret society (how shallow is that), but then, even when we get to the part where he fights back against the mysterious powers-that-be – Jeremy’s motivations could not be any worse or selfish – he was just like a spoilt child wanting revenge for being denied what he wanted. I just could not get past that. And the other characters were no better – with new characters randomly introduced then dropped quickly before we can get attached to them.

For a thriller, I found the story lacking in actual thrills or anything original or even anything that sounds reasonably believable – like I said, the author tried to be too clever by half and pretty much throws in all sorts of gimmickry that spoils the last two-thirds of the book – secret codes for Jeremy & his cohorts to solve, mysterious underground tunnels under the school, a custom-made ‘challenge’ room filled with deadly puzzles, and whoa, even Voodoo supernatural plot elements that appeared out of left field, etc etc. The plot just got sillier and more unbelievable, and when we got to the big reveal in the end, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and just ended up feeling sorry for the villains. I don’t think that was the desired reaction, right? 😉

The Faculty Club by Danny Tobey is available on Amazon as a Kindle edition ($9.99), Hardcover edition ($10.00), Paperback edition ($11.25), and Audible Audio Edition ($17.95).

The eBook is also available at B&N, Sony and iBooks for $9.99.

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