Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - The Last Graduate

I devoured The Last Graduate like my life depended on it, or more accurately as if I were a maw-mouth on a war path towards my next treat of a graduating Scholomance class. El's heroic journey develops wonderfully, albeit emotionally draining as she comes to terms with her potential and destiny. Orion and El truly appear as opposites perfectly balancing one another out, or as two sides of the same coin. I was delighted at the appearance of two queer couples (mlm and wlw) as well as a vaguely mentioned background love triangle turned triad. The cliffhanger has me desperate to get my hands on the next book in the series, even though I know the first chapter will most likely appear devastating.

Content Warnings

mickey__'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

INTRODUCTION

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik is the sequel to A Deadly Education. It continues straight from the first book and is, as a whole, a lot more focused on El's character development and how the Scholomance works.
There are two reasons that I did not rate this book is not 5 stars - I took off half a star for each reason.

Rating: 4⭐️/ 5⭐️
Age: 14+
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Similar books: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, If We Were Villains by ML Rio, These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong

❃REASON NUMBER ONE-❃

The info dumps were still going strong in this book. I often found myself skipping entire pages because of it. I still understood the book as a whole, however, so a lot of it seemed very unnecessary. It was almost like a conscious stream of thought that ended up becoming a useless tangent. -0.5 stars

“No matter how hard you’ve worked, there’s always something to worry about.”

❃REASON NUMBER TWO-❃

Although the romance in this book was absolutely adorable, I felt as if I completely missed the development of it. In other words, it went from 0-100 in 5 seconds. This didn't massively impact my enjoyment of their relationship, but it did confuse me and leave me feeling a bit unsatisfied. -0.5 stars

“There’s no such thing as normal people, I said, a desperate flailing. “There’s just people, and some of them are miserable, and some of them are happy, and you’ve the same right to be happy as any of them—no more and no less.”

CONCLUSION

Overall, this book was an incredible sequel with the best/worst cliffhanger ever known to man like omg what the actual-
ANYWAY I absolutely cannot wait for the third book. I would recommend this series to anyone who wants a magic boarding school vibe (an older Harry Potter style) with a rivals-to-lovers slash an 'I want to kill you oh wait you're kinda hot-' romance.

Content Warnings

wrenxavier's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

azurelunatic's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

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