This seems to be a divisive read, but I will say many of the criticisms I’ve read are just of the premise or it being in this subgenre. I don’t want to criticize the depiction of Felicity’s mental illness, because it is own voices, but I will say I was a bit confused comparing the author’s note (and her Goodreads review) with how Felicity is portrayed. (Again, that’s not a fault of the book, but with what I brought to it.) Ellis and Felicity also have an unhealthy relationship, with Ellis being manipulative and often leading Felicity into dangerous territory for her well being, which was hard to watch, especially as Felicity seems to miss a lot of the red flags. Part of the reason I didn’t personally enjoy it was that I have a terrible memory and have a bit of a phobia of it becoming worse, so reading from the perspective of someone who often lost touch with reality was very unsettling. They recite poetry in rooms lit by candlelight, they write their essays on typewriters and eschew cell phones, and they dress like they’re in a period piece. Dalloway House is a creepy boarding school, and the students are just the kind of pretentious academics you’d expect from the setting. If you’re looking for sapphic dark academia, this definitely fits the brief. Felicity has more and more trouble telling reality from fiction, especially as she stops medicating for her psychotic depression (a diagnosis the author shares). Soon, she finds herself immersed in a world of magic and murder again, even as Ellis tries to prove the Dalloway “witches” were just ordinary women and that the murders could happen without magic.

That’s when Ellis shows up: a famous (teen) author who is writing about the Dalloway murders and pulls Felicity in to her research. This time, she’s determined to set aside the attraction to witchcraft and concentrate on her studies. At the time, she’d been obsessed with Dalloway House’s history, with its murders and rumors of witchcraft. Last year, her girlfriend died in a tragic accident. This is a dark academia YA novel about Felicity, who has come back to her exclusive/pretentious boarding school after taking a leave to take care of her mental health. Likely if I hadn’t have had that gap in between, I would have enjoyed it more. I also started listening to this in October, when I love reading horror and thrillers, but it expired when I was halfway through and I finished in about a month later. So while I didn’t enjoy this read as a whole, that’s down to my own choices. I went into it looking for a creepy, unsettling read and then finished feeling unnerved and unhappy about feeling that way.

I feel a little “ dead dove, do not eat” about this reading experience.

A lesson in vengeance review