Reviews with content warning for Drug use - A Lesson in Vengeance

This book will mess with your head a bit especially with the unreliable narrator. I loved it and I expect to see it on all your fall dark gothic lists!

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sam's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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strawbeb's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I just finished it a few minutes ago and that was….. what a journey. It is definitely for those craving a horror, dark academia, lesbian, boarding school tale. The writing was beautiful to read and the characters were interesting to know. I especially love love loved all the parallels, especially at the end of the book. A great read.

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allisonwonderlandreads's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

In this ya thriller, Felicity arrives at Dalloway, a private girls' boarding school with a dark history, for a second chance at her senior year. She returns from her mental sabbatical to her same room, but all her friends have graduated and her girlfriend is dead. As she faces the rumor mill and her own fears from the night Alex died, she falls into orbit around a prodigy writer, Ellis.

This thriller just wasn't a good fit for me. First, the relationships are sapped of any altruism. Felicity has an absent, rich mother, a cruel, dead girlfriend, and faces manipulation, gaslighting, and fear of being outed as a lesbian while grappling with her psychotic depression. Everything is toxic.

In terms of characters, Ellis especially pissed me off from almost the start. She uses her semi-celebrity status and charisma to pressure everyone around her into getting her way, even when the others push back or bubble over with doubts. While much of my energy was devoted to the anti-Ellis train, I didn't develop equally strong positive connections with the other characters, even the protagonist. Felicity's motivations were always murky to me, and while I think this was a tactic to keep her secrets safely hidden until the right moment, it left me detached from her in the (lengthy) interim.

It's also one of those thrillers where I spent the whole time asking: but WHY would you do that? Also, please don't do that. It lacked the spookiness of supernatural thrillers and the visceral tension caused by more human threats, though the story plays with elements of both. It's a very slow build. By the time things kicked off right at the end, I was hanging on out of a need to know the outcome for a fully informed review, not any sense of excitement.

So what might someone else like about this book? Mental health and queer representation are central to the story, although both feature difficult journeys and toxic situations. If you like a literary intelligentsia or witchy vibe, I think you will enjoy the atmosphere and references here.

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