Reviews with content warning for Blood - A Lesson in Vengeance

At some points in this book I thought I was able to predict what would come next but I was always proven wrong. It kept me in a state of shock at every step with plot twists and reveals.

With the subject of high school girls, it makes sense that it read like a YA. At some points it felt like it was almost pretentiously trying to be adult, but that’s also on theme. The prose felt like it was trying too hard at times to be dark and edgy, but overall the vibes were very spooky academic.

Definitely a page turner. I enjoyed it.

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kerrygetsliterary's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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cosmo_naut's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

First off: I am not a big mystery/thriller reader. It's not really my thing, so this will colour my preception of the book.
I read this book in one night, in the midst of exam season, because I just had to know that I was right with my predictions and guesses. I liked it in general and I had a good time reading it.
I don't think the prose will be to everyone's taste. It's supposed to be dark academia, so the book is littered with literary references that occasionally are rewarding to understand, but often seem very piled on. I did appreciate some of the meta-level a few of those discussions had. The plot was quite predictable (even for a newbie like me) and I could guess the plot twist pretty early on. I didn't really mind the tropy-ness of the book but I've seen some other reviewers complain about it. The ending seemed really rushed which was a bit disappointing because the build up of the tension was really good. I would have loved to spend more time on the aftermath of everything that happened. Instead, it feels like it was brushed off. The main character is 18 and this book being a mystery and Young Adult, I didn't mind her making a couple of stupid decisions - and in the grand scheme of things her decisions did make sense. The side characters sadly fell a bit flat. If the book had been 50, or even 100, pages longer, I think there would be the space to flesh out these characters as well as the ending more.
Whatever the technical issues with the book may be: I had a good time reading it. I would definitely recommend checking the content warnings before reading it - there's some pretty heavy things in here.

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rorykluciarova's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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kshertz's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

It was an interesting read. I did not go into it knowing very much. I really enjoyed the beginning in the premise that set up about unreliable narrators and trying to figure out what’s going on with these two girls. Also trying to figure out what happened with Alex. But it jumps around a lot which can make it hard to follow. There’s animal cruelty for seemingly no reason. I don’t fully connect with the characters and don’t really care what ended up happening to them so I can’t really recommend it. I’m not really loving that it seems to say killing people is so awesome. Some other review said “sorry, killing is not supposed to be a girl boss move” and that’s exactly how I feel too. It’s hard to get behind a message that feels like “lesbians are clearly all psychopaths”. I hope that’s not the intent.

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takarakei's review

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

I wished this was more dark academia, which to me is a critique of academic institutions. I didn't really feel like this book critiqued boarding schools - it just talked about the dark history of this particular one. It's kinda hard to say a lot more about this book without spoilers because it's very mysterious. Definitely there's a lot of 'you don't know who to trust'. Sapphic. I think there was a lot of potential here, but it didn't quite hit it out of the park for me. I'm also not a thriller person so take that how you will, but I have read other YA thrillers that I liked more.

In the end there not being any magic was not where I wanted it to go. But I guess it's not fantasy tagged so maybe that was the giveaway? But 'witchcraft' is literally also used in the description, so...

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