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A review by deepbutdazzlingdarkness
A Darker Mischief by Derek Milman
2.0
The premise of this appealed to me immediately, but unfortunately I didn’t end up liking it. A lot of the plot felt super contrived, like even super early on, how did Cal just magically figure out the riddles on the website?? So many things just happened so ~easily and I didn’t find them believable. Idk if it’s on purpose or not, but I found the main character pretty unlikable and just…annoying. Luke too. And the writing style, especially using all caps unironically so many times? Not a fan. Also not a fan of the epilogue. It felt very pat and I kind of laughed incredulously at what happened to [redacted].
I don’t actually think I’ve read very many ~dark academia books before though, so the genre might just not be for me. People being so desperate to fit in and belong to something that they’ll do anything to achieve their goals is just something I’ll fundamentally never understand or relate to lol. I did love the absolutely gorgeous cover though, and the sort of world-building aspects of it were interesting to me, as well as the fact that the main character is gay and he gets a romance.
Thanks to NetGalley and Scholastic for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
I don’t actually think I’ve read very many ~dark academia books before though, so the genre might just not be for me. People being so desperate to fit in and belong to something that they’ll do anything to achieve their goals is just something I’ll fundamentally never understand or relate to lol. I did love the absolutely gorgeous cover though, and the sort of world-building aspects of it were interesting to me, as well as the fact that the main character is gay and he gets a romance.
Thanks to NetGalley and Scholastic for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.