Colleen Rowley attends St. Joan’s Academy, a prestigious all-girl school… Between competing to be valedictorian and applying to universities, senior year is tough for Colleen and her friends, and the girls try to have it all under control. Suddenly, a mystery illness seems to take Colleen’s classmates one by one, each of them with more bizarre symptoms than the other. It doesn’t take long for the media and the whole community to get involved and through a whirlwind of paparazzies, journalists, protesters, everyone has something to say about the illness. Colleen, who reads The Crucible for extra credit and is a friend of some of the girls afflicted, has her own ideas about the situation; Could the girls be faking their illness the same way those in The Crucible do? And most of all...Could the strange way her friend Emma act have something to do with the illness?

Conversion is told with two storylines inspired by true events – the first in which we follow Collen and her friends during modern time, and the last in which we follow the story of a group of girl faking their illness in Salem, during the seventeenth century – that lead us wondering about what is really going on with the girls at St. Joan’s Academy.

Although I didn’t have a bad time reading this book, it was far from being my favourite read, because of the way the author dealt with the two storylines. What disappointed me is the fact that the two storylines are very independent from each other, which made their union pointless. Indeed, apart from a weird, meant to be mysterious, and unnecessary allusion to the Salem storyline, at the end of the modern one, the two storylines can literally be read separately, without it messing with the reader’s understanding of the plots. If the author’s goal was to join the two storylines to add intrigue, it wasn’t successful.

However, I have to say, that the characters were well-developed and endearing, and that I enjoyed Colleen’s family dynamic. The plot was interesting, even though it wasn’t as complex as I wanted it to be. Still, I wouldn’t discourage anyone to read it, especially if you like stories about the Salem witch trials. For those who do, I would also recommend you to read How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather, which I enjoyed much more.