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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
this was kinda slow at first but it really picked up at the end , love felicitellis very much
i finished reading this over a week ago and completely
forgot to mark it as read
i honestly can't tell if i genuinely loved this book or i badly wanted to. i mean i love the author + cover + plot so giving it five stars is a no-brainer for me
there were parts i adored and parts i decidedly didn't, all of which i cant remember
forgot to mark it as read
i honestly can't tell if i genuinely loved this book or i badly wanted to. i mean i love the author + cover + plot so giving it five stars is a no-brainer for me
there were parts i adored and parts i decidedly didn't, all of which i cant remember
this was kinda slow at first but it really picked up at the end , love felicitellis very much
CW: hard to do this without major spoilers but Spoilerdrug use, scenes of intense spiralling out of control mental health, murder (including one lesbian character), psychopathy, extreme gaslighting playing on a person's mental health, descriptions of dead bodies, murder made to look like suicide, toxic/emotionally abusive romantic relationship
5 Stars
This was deliciously evil.
Secret societies with a history of murder. Toxic friendships between pretentious, obsessive young adults. An unreliable narrator and a creepy mystery that keeps you guessing until the end to such an extent, you won't even be sure of the genre of the book until the final reveals.
This isn't one of those books that I loved because it made me laugh and gave me nice warm feelings. This book was brutal and cold AF, none of the characters likeable (except perhaps Leonie), but still super compelling. It's the kind of book where you know things are going to end badly, but you have absolutely no idea what form the series of unfortunate events will take. Spoiler(The only thing that seemed obvious to me was that Clara was marked for death. By supernatural or human causes, however, I had no idea.) You get pulled along into the vortex of Felicity's spiralling paranoia, and it's a nauseating but thrilling ride.
Definitely a great book for spooky month.
5 Stars
This was deliciously evil.
Secret societies with a history of murder. Toxic friendships between pretentious, obsessive young adults. An unreliable narrator and a creepy mystery that keeps you guessing until the end to such an extent, you won't even be sure of the genre of the book until the final reveals.
This isn't one of those books that I loved because it made me laugh and gave me nice warm feelings. This book was brutal and cold AF, none of the characters likeable (except perhaps Leonie), but still super compelling. It's the kind of book where you know things are going to end badly, but you have absolutely no idea what form the series of unfortunate events will take. Spoiler(The only thing that seemed obvious to me was that Clara was marked for death. By supernatural or human causes, however, I had no idea.) You get pulled along into the vortex of Felicity's spiralling paranoia, and it's a nauseating but thrilling ride.
Definitely a great book for spooky month.
I think they tried really hard to set up a red herring that didn’t work for me. They also never really resolved any mysteries that were difficult to resolve, the author just ignored them. And we continued to circle through the same “yes ghosts are real and they’re after me” to “no! I’m healed and happy” and I just got tired of it.
Ellis is something new, and it feels like she creates and unravels me in the same moment, a sentence she writes and erases and rewrites, a product of her wants and imagination. I feel like she invented me.
2.5 stars. Exquisitely written. Lee has a way with words and characters that's just unparalleled. Obsessive, complicated relationships remain one of my favourite things to read about in fiction, and for about 2/3 of this book I was completely pulled into this sad, dark, twisty story. There were some scenes I read with my hand literally at my throat. I'm not always a fan of books with unreliable narrators, books that leave you not knowing what to think, beyond the mystery (and the text does refer to that pretty clearly a couple times, about perception and narrators and mental illness, especially with female characters) but here, I did enjoy it. A few genre tropes were turned on their heads pretty satisfyingly. Several books that touch on mental illness have a scene where a character stops taking their medication in a moment of triumph, which I really never like. Not to say that stopping meds on your own is always a bad thing; it definitely isn't. It's just often written in a way that gives me hives. In this book, I really liked the overall approach. Emotions and characterisation were handled so well, and I appreciated every character and what they brought to the story.
Then it zigged, when I was hoping it would zag, and I kinda lost interest after that. The book dropped two stars for me in about 2 pages. Great story but oooof, not for me; especially not me as I am right now. Sometimes I finish a book and I just want to bask in it for a few hours and think about nothing else. Right now I want to finish this review immediately so I can go read absolutely anything else. And I don't know, I think that's still pretty impressive, for a writer to inspire emotions like that. I really loved Lee's Feverwake duo, so I'm sure I'll read from them again.
Content warnings:
Spoiler
alcoholism, parental neglect, psychosis, suicidal ideation, murder, death, animal death, some descriptions of gore, gaslighting, anorexia
Wow. Simply, wow.
After The Fever King and The Electric Heir, Victoria Lee became an automatic-buy author. This was just incredible; first of all, dark academia has always been my jam, and this fits the bill entirely. The atmosphere, the setting, the /writing/ is so good. Lee's writing is just so compelling and it flows so well, and I am so looking forward to anything else she will write in the future. I absolutely loved this and nearly devoured it. The characters and the tension, and the thrilling plot kept me hooked. I loved the ending, and how the book got darker as it went along. I already can't wait to read this again. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
After The Fever King and The Electric Heir, Victoria Lee became an automatic-buy author. This was just incredible; first of all, dark academia has always been my jam, and this fits the bill entirely. The atmosphere, the setting, the /writing/ is so good. Lee's writing is just so compelling and it flows so well, and I am so looking forward to anything else she will write in the future. I absolutely loved this and nearly devoured it. The characters and the tension, and the thrilling plot kept me hooked. I loved the ending, and how the book got darker as it went along. I already can't wait to read this again. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
“So this is it. Ellis’s magnum opus. The book she cared for enough to sacrifice everything: Cara’s life. Her own. And all the rest of us bit players in her masterpiece.
I open the cover, flipping past the title page.
‘For Felicity, I did it all for you’”
So this is one of those books that REALLY gets you. At the start I was thinking, ‘yeah, this is good’ and that continued though the middle but THE END. THE END of dark academia novels always get me. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME. So yes this book is five stars.
And she’s a lesbian, so it makes it even better because sapphic books are just better.
I open the cover, flipping past the title page.
‘For Felicity, I did it all for you’”
So this is one of those books that REALLY gets you. At the start I was thinking, ‘yeah, this is good’ and that continued though the middle but THE END. THE END of dark academia novels always get me. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME. So yes this book is five stars.
And she’s a lesbian, so it makes it even better because sapphic books are just better.
I LOVED this story! I described it to my husband as a dark chocolate truffle: rich and elegant and dark. The vibes are dark academia + witches + haunted house. This story is in my top 5 reads of the year for sure!
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Gun violence, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Blood, Grief, Murder, Outing, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Classism