Review by literaryjunkie - Nocticadia

literaryjunkie 's review for:

Nocticadia by Keri Lake

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense slow-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: Yes

This was a great dark academic novel! I loved the setting, the atmosphere, the history of the natives/ disease, and the scholarly study of it too. I also loved Lilia. She is one of the most self-determined and strong-willed FMCs I've read in a while. Professor Bramwell is also a new personal fave. There are so many lives from him that I have saved. This story starts with Lilia Vespertine as she tries to work past the death of her mother that took place four years ago. She lives in Covington with her sister's dad and is just trying to make ends meet. She attends a community college part-time while also working full-time. She wrote a paper on a fictional disease that was inspired by her mother's death. Her memory is foggy, but she distinctively remembers these black worms coming out of her mouth. The paper is noticed by her professor, and she is offered the chance to attend the prestigious Dracadia University where she hopes to further her studies and discover the mystery of her mother's death.
We are now introduced to the wonderful world of Dracadia Island. I love the dreary vibes it gives and the way the author describes the setting, makes me feel like I am discovering Dracadia with Lilia. She befriends a guy named Spencer on the train ride over and tries to find her place at the university. She is on a full-ride scholarship and at a financial disadvantage among her peers, so she focuses on her studies. That is until she meets Professor Bramwell, a.k.a. "Doctor Death." She is soon transfixed by him and broody nature and hopes to uncover the secrets he harbors beneath. Professor Bramwell or Devryck is known for his infamous father. He supposedly kidnapped six women to inject them and perform tests on them to find a cure for the disease called Nocticism. Students believe that Professor Bramwell follows in his father's footsteps and is responsible for one of the students missing. Bramwell instructs a class Lilia is in, and we go through the book seeing their relationship slowly blossom, as Lilia works in the library and goes around the island to uncover secrets of the past. I enjoyed the slow burn and seeing how Bramwell was her number-one support even in her tough circumstances. He was always a crutch for her and her him,

and she was the one to make him feel again. I also liked the forced proximity that happened when she blackmailed him into being his lab assistant since she wanted to help study the disease she believed killed her mother. That's when the tension rised.

Now, here are some spoilers.

The last 20% of the book kicked into full gear. I will try to make sure I cover everything. We learn early on that Bramwell has some type of disease that causes him to have intense pain and seizures (his father had it). He is working on test subjects (people he had kidnapped, bad people though) to inject them with Noctcism (parasites eat them alive) and work on an antipode to try and cure them. He has mostly failed, and they die. Lilia has helped him numerous times when he had seizures and aims to help find a cure as well. He has suffered some intense childhood trauma, including seeing his brother get kidnapped and later discovering he was killed. She learns that her mother was a native of the island and went by a name she did not know. People throughout the book keep bringing up this name and saying she favors her, so she can tie it all together. She can verify this information when a professor she does not like trades her some info for some information on a society she knows about. This professor also verified that Lippincott is her father (bad man). He is the president/ a high position at the school and is supposedly Spencer's father. She knew it was true when she also found a letter from her mother at her childhood home on the island verifying all the information. Lilia is soon expelled from school for reasons unknown and has to return to Covington. When is there, Angelo barges in (a really bad guy) and tries to assault/ kill her. She puts up a really good fight and Bramwell soon arrives after hearing about her recent departure to save her. She remembers that her mother was suffering some form of physics the night she died and tried to drown her sister. Lilia stops her by holding her underwater and Angelo is there to kill her and make it look like a suicide. Her memory was spotty from that night, so that is why she was not able to remember everything. He does, and they go back to Dracadia Island for her to heal at his childhood home with a messed up Angelo in tow. We learn that Angelo was assigned by Lippincott to kill Lilia because he knows his daughter and does not want her to expose his wrongdoings. He had been the one to inject her mom with the disease since she was a native (and the other six women), got her pregnant, and abandoned her. He is also responsible for sending the hit out on him for Angelo to kill because of the threat he opposed the Bramwell studies. Angelo is being tortured when Lilia thinks she is hallucinating a man in a bird mask that she believes has been following her around, but it is Caeden (Devryck's brother who is not dead). He puts on a show to get one of Lilias's professors who was brought to the house to relay some information we already know (she worked on the case data with Bramwell's father). He then kidnaps Lilia and takes her to the university. Back there, Lippincott is giving a whole villain monologue to Bramwell as he is drinking alcohol laced with the disease. He also relays that Spencer is not his son and is Bramwell's half-brother (knew that beforehand). He is threatening Bramwell to give all the information in the case study as he receives video evidence from Spencer that he killed Jenny. He relays this to him as he tries to shoot him, but he soon realizes he was drugged and collapsed. Now...some mysterious cloaked men barge into Bramwell's lab as he leaves to search for Lilia. Caeden eventually lets her go, but she is then kidnapped by the mysterious cloaked men known as the Rooks. They are at a church where Bramwell meets them to negotiate Lilia's release (she technically didn't do anything, but they are punishing her on Bramwell's behalf). He has evidence to clear his name of all the stuff he has been accused of, but they do not want to let Lilia go since she knows about them. She negotiates to join the society (they have to let her attend Dracidia 4-years full-ride + masters, and buy her mother's childhood home). They agree and she goes through this branding ritual thing. She is officially a member and has access to wealth and status. She also found a substance called Black Rock (used earlier on to save Bramwell) that can sustain the toxin for the research they have been conducting. We end with the lovely Lilia Vespertine and Devryck Bramwell making groundbreaking research on Noctisism (due to Lilia's findings on Black Rock able to stabalize Bramwell's disease and hopefully many others) and discovering they are the cure for each other's lives (cue tears).

Content Warnings