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4.13k reviews for:

A Lesson in Vengeance

Victoria Lee

3.59 AVERAGE

dark mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: N/A
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

my personal favorite thing is that there is not one man in this book.

3.5/5

I sped through this book and was intrigued the whole time but I also still feel like I had a lot of questions. Following Felicity was interesting in the sense of having a more reliable narrator but I also never grew a very strong attachment to her. I feel like having some Ellis narratives every now and then may have furthered my enjoyment a little more but I still had a fun time reading this book. I simply think my hopes were just very high and also rather broad.

2,5
challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
dark slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Mehhh. Boring. Super annoying characters. Not enough vengeance. Not enough witchcraft. 
dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was okay, but not great. The were some weird issues where I couldn’t tell what was unreliable narrator and what might just be errors. The characters were honestly a bit obnoxious and I couldn’t feel any sympathy. I suppose a story about two psychopaths is going to be somewhat unpredictable and lack logic, but I didn’t really get the point, tbh. It has left me bemused, and maybe that was the point, after all.
dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
challenging dark emotional tense
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes

In theory, and in my full expectation when I started reading this, this should've been a new favourite book for me. I loved the atmosphere, the setting, the unreliable narration, the themes of witchcraft and grief. The first 75 percent were awesome, and really reminded me of my experience with reading The Secret History , but better. Which is why it has close to a five stars for me.
After that part though, is where the book went from one to a hundred really quickly. It went into a direction I really didn't like. This makes reading the book very difficult, as you can imagine!

As explained in the acknowledgements by the author, she started with writing this book with a long list of countless ideas and shorter fragments she wanted to put in the story. And that's where it went wrong for me, I think. The ending didn't feel like it belonged to the buildup and direction the story was going at all. In hindsight, I guess I can see where the foreshadowing was supposed to be, but it just didn't give me what I wanted from this book at all.
One more note I have to add, is that I find myself very much on the fence of how mental health was handled with the unreliable narration of this story. Especially with what the author decided to do with the "twist". I think that gave it a little bit of a nasty aftertaste to me, even though I completely wanted to love this book.
adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes