Reviews with content warning for Confinement - An Education in Malice

Dark Academia started its life as collages of stolen photos posted on Pinterest and tumblr. Gothic churches, colleges in autumn, people in flowing blouses. When I started reading for pleasure again in 2022, I was shocked to discover this was now a literary genre. How do you take collections of pretty photos and turn them into themes and plots?

Well... this book includes an interview with the author. In it, she says her stories start as a music video in her mind with vibes-based images and that's exactly how this novel turned out. It's vibes. It is a collection of scenes that if it was a movie or a music video, would be turned into gifs and reblogged on tumblr until the end of days. There's a massive college party where all four floors of the dorms are transformed into a representation of The Divine Comedy. During the opening ceremony, senior girls in pure white dresses put laurel crowns on the incoming freshmen around a bonfire. Does this have anything to do with the themes of the story? Nope! But they are cool to think about!

Things only happen to push us from one pretty set piece to another. And there's very, very few things that happen in this novel. It honestly bothers me that both protagonists are poets and spend all of their time off-screen writing poetry, but we only get two poems from them in the entire book. The author is a poet... where are the poems? This novel also doesn't need two PoVs, and I sometimes got them confused because they were so similar. (I feel bad that the author admits she struggled to make their voices sound different; I don't think she succeeded.) I also think it's weird that the protagonist being plus size is a selling point but no one mentions this until like 45% through the book?

But the thing is like, I was one of those girls reblogging collections of stolen photos a decade ago. The vibes are immaculate! I would reblog the gifs of the movie of this novel! But it's like, eating a giant puff of black cotton candy from a cone with bookshelves printed on it. There is no substance here. The words are beautiful, but so little happens. I am completely torn on what number to give to this book. It was pretty. It bored me. I'd read her other novels. I'm glad I checked this out of the library instead of preordering it.

Content Warnings

jems_'s review against another edition

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4.75

I was provided an audio ARC of this which was the very first audiobook I ever finished!

I had heard about this book before, as well as the author’s other work, though I had not read or otherwise consumed any of it myself so far. This was thus my first encounter with S.T. Gibson.

That said, listening to this was a very pleasant experience. The narrator, Stephanie Cannon, did an amazing job of the voices and has a beautiful voice. Multiple times I went back in the audiobook to hear her narrate professor De Lafontaine because it sounded like an entirely different person. It greatly helped immerse me in the story.

Going into this, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect of the story, especially the relationship between the professor and her students. On that, I am still not entirely certain what I think, though although strange, technically nothing too damnable happened in that aspect which I appreciate. (By damnable I‘m mostly referring to anything explicit since I don’t know how I would’ve felt about that. That aside the relationship was still really toxic! However, I don’t think the book acknowledged it as anything but if I‘m not mistaken which is important.)

I did really enjoy the relationship between Carmilla and Laura. As a very loyal and faithful person myself, unfaithfulness is generally something I can’t tolerate and there was at least one instance in this book that tested me in that regard. However, surprisingly it didn’t make me drop and dnf it like I would other books until now so that definitely says something. I think the other party‘s reaction influenced my own reaction to it as well, but that’s as much as I want to say on that to not spoiler too much!

Overall, I enjoyed the narrative style and the writing as it was read beautifully was nice and not too complicated. The characters were fleshed out with interesting, albeit a bit strange dynamics, though those were a big point of the story anyways and weren’t supposed to be the most healthy.
In my opinion it was a very nice experience and I‘m very grateful I got approved for this ARC!

Content Warnings

heathersinkwell's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

3.5

AN EDUCATION IN MALICE by S. T. Gibson is a Carmilla reimagining that takes place in the 1960s at an all-girls private college in Massachusetts. It’s a dual-POV novel filled with sapphic vampires. This book is atmospheric and filled with dark academia themes (check the content warnings before reading!).

I very much enjoyed this book. I loved Gibson’s prose and character development. Where I didn’t naturally identify with and fall in love with the characters, I was still able to thoroughly enjoy this book. The academic rivals-to-lovers trope was done well in the beginning but lost a bit of steam once the two girls got together. There were several parts of the book that felt rushed, this being one of them, but it never brought me out of the story.

The narrator, overall, did a great job. Her accents and voices were great for each character. My one complaint is that she lost the accents a few times, which made some pieces of dialogue a bit confusing.

Again, overall, I very much enjoyed this book and am excited for Gibson’s next work.

Thank you to Hachette Audio and NetGalley for the audiobook ARC!

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jashanac's review

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4.5

Thanks to NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

OVERALL:
Well dark academia isn't typically to my taste, but ST Gibson is the one who could change that for me, apparently! I quite enjoyed Evocation (though I personally feel like that's way less 'academia' than what you usually see referred to as dark academia) and I LOVED this!

I thought the character work was stellar, and the plot was intriguing, though for me it was mostly vibes, which is what I love in dark, gothic works. This, to me, is excellent as far as gothic fiction goes.

RE-READABILITY:
I will definitely be purchasing a copy of this with the intent to re-read in the future.

CHARACTERS:
I loved these characters and how well Gibson fleshed them out in such a short amount of time. Laura and Carmilla both felt like very real people, and their rivals-to-lovers dynamic was top tier. The tension that their dynamic created was also top tier!

The complexities of how Carmilla felt about Laura and about Mrs. D... how Laura felt about Carmilla and Mrs. D... and how Mrs. D felt about Carmilla and Laura and Mysterious Other Character... it was all incredibly compelling to me.

PLOT:
Over the past year or so I have really come to confirm that I tend to love gothic fiction. Which is a little odd, since I often don't love melodrama, and gothic fiction is heavy on the melodrama. The plot in this one was fairly straight-forward and I wouldn't say that there was high levels of intrigue in that regard -- for a bit there was a mystery that we as the reader were not in on, but then after that was revealed there was a mystery that the side characters were ignorant to, that we were in on as the reader.

But it worked for me, because the eerie vibes were HIGH, and I was mostly invested in the "what's-going-to-end-up-happening-between-these-three-characters" plot. The dynamic between Laura, Carmilla, and Mrs. D.

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