This started off very strong. I was sucked into the plot and characters, wanting to know more about them immediately. Would recommend for fans of Plain Bad Heroines.

I thought this one was a good mix of dark academia, witchyness and mystery. I was enjoying trying to figure out what happened in the past school years that was affecting our main character so much and it was interesting to see how all the other characters were so wary of them. The ending was not my favorite but the build up did a really good job of getting us to that conclusion. I was hoping for more witch folklore and related stuff to magic but it was still good with what we got. There is a lot of mention of the classics genre and references to them in this one so if you like classics then this might be a fun book for you.

I wanted to like this, but the story was not really focused for me to enjoy it. Lee's writing style is fantastic, and I will definitely pick up other books she has written and will write in the future. This book was marketed as dark academia (it wasn't) with witches (there weren't,) and also an historical mystery (barely touched upon.) For me it was more a psychological thriller with an unreliable narrator - and perhaps if it had been marketed as such I would have enjoyed it better.

I love the premise of this book: boarding schools, dark academia, mysteries with witches, and lesbians! The cover is also stunning. The writing is competent and flows well and the plot is was intriguing in the beginning and propulsive towards the end. It does seem to slow down and drag for parts, though, and I'm wondering if this is an issue with gothic novels for me. The relationships needed to be a bit more fleshed out for me to fully connect to the characters, but overall I think this book has an audience it will be successful with and I will recommend in readers advisory.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Despite the prose being well written, allowing readers to be easily transported to the setting and feel the characters' emotions, the book does tend to drag in some parts due to the inclusion of unnecessary details. Although the beginning may start off a bit slow, the plot does eventually pick up, making for a captivating read.

This was so, so, so scary. I knew how it would end but it was super chilling and it actually triggered me a lot, so please check for any trigger warnings before jumping into this one.

A dark, slow burn. Atmospheric, language to mull over, and a long slow build. I enjoyed this quite a lot.

I went into this book thinking I was just getting another boarding school book. (And there’s nothing wrong with that because that is one of my go to genres/tropes) However what I got was so much more than a boarding school book. We got mystery, the allure of magic (think the idea of Salem witch myth at the center of the story) and so much more this book was just a really fun time. I love that our narrator was unreliable at times due the her traumatic past. There’s LGBTQ+ representation. Honestly the only reason my rating isn’t 4 stars is because the main character never really learned from her past actions and ended up repeating her actions even though she did exactly what I wanted to do for 100 or so pages.

This was an interesting engaging read but I’ve learned that gothic really isn’t my thing. I enjoyed it well enough to push to the end.

This just didn't hold my attention well. I get that it was a play on the style of gothic novels like the girls were studying, but the slow build left me wondering when something was going to happen. I did push through and finished the book and liked it well enough. It could have been the timing of my reading as well as I was distracted with other events.

2.5/5
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. It has elements of a potential murder mystery, questionable narrators, a boarding school, and dark academia. But A Lesson In Vengeance fell flat when it takes on spoiled rich kids, method writing, and a lot of philosophy talk. It's the non-English literature student in me that had many references fly over my head, which made this book feel pretentious than not.

The beginning was slow for me, but there are winning parts with WLW relationships and openly speaking about mental health and therapy. Although, the main character Felicity emphasizes that she doesn't recall exactly what happened with her dead girlfriend, and that brings up the unreliable narrator aspect. There were mentions of witches, magic, and haunting spirits, which fit well into the creepy boarding school in the mountains setting.

The secondary major character we're introduced right from the first few chapters, and Felicity's immediate obsession with Ellis wasn't enjoyable to read about. Admittedly, I wanted more substance between them before jumping into a project together about stories of witches and the dead. Felicity and Ellis do come off as shallow and entitled, but somehow they're unique and draw people in. I was hoping for a fun dark academia book, but this one was lacklustre.

so i’m not sure if dark academia is the problem (if i just don’t like the genre), or the book itself. gonna go with the book.

i couldn’t connect with any of the characters. the side characters didn’t feel very fleshed out, and while the main characters were more so, i didn’t care a great deal about ellis or felicity. their friendship began so suddenly that i was sorta confused. the plot wasn’t super exciting, but i was able to read this quickly. i didn’t feel like this was felicity’s story until the ending—she’s mostly strung along on ellis’s quest to write her novel. i also found it weird that none of the other girls had phones? like wtf? you’re in high school and you don’t have a phone?? i also think this should’ve taken place at a college instead of a high school and just been an adult novel. the characters actions and maturity would’ve made more sense.

this would’ve been a 2 star read if it wasn’t for the last 20% or the writing style. the third act was really exciting and twisty, probably my favorite part of the book. and the writing was really gorgeous and descriptive.

My Rating: 3/5 Stars

My Review:

I received a digital arc of this book from Penguin Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review – thanks!

I have been really excited to read this book since it was announced – sapphic dark academia? Sign me up! And while I did enjoy this book, it wasn’t exactly mind blowing. The plot had more than half of the book to build up to the twist, but the rest of the book felt rushed and not exactly what had felt like was being built up. I had expected more, and with that, I was a bit disappointed with the way it turned out.

I have to start with talking about our main character: Felicity Morrow. I did really enjoy her voice, but it is important to recognize that she can be a very unreliable narrator, which is to no fault of her own and is actually a big part of the story. The decision to focalize the novel through Felicity’s voice means that there is always this sense of uncertainty, but I found it less suspenseful and more tedious as the story went on. I felt like having a removed narrator, especially in the dark and grim thriller this book is set out to be, could have improved on that aspect of the story.

This isn’t to say that I don’t like Lee’s writing, because I absolutely do! The way Dalloway House is built, all of the expectations and dark secrets, were super atmospheric. I felt like I was walking through the halls of this Victorian house alongside our characters, and all of the literature references were like a warm blanket. The academia aspect of this novel was spectacular, albeit a little exaggerated at times (at least I assume, I don’t imagine this is the experience of most private school girls, but feel free to correct me). I had to keep reminding myself that this was set in a high school type place, not a college like it often felt.

One of my biggest critiques of this book, and where I will probably get into some spoilers so feel free to avert now, was with the twist itself. The entire book seems to be centred around Felicity and her realizing that she is not who she thinks she is. She is learning to accept herself and that everyone carries a darkness around and that everyone has their own ways of coping with trauma. Because of this, the emphasis on Felicity learning and remembering exactly what happened to Alex, the conclusion felt off. I couldn’t see it being plausible that Felicity would kill Ellis the same way she had accidentally done to Alex, not after all of the guilt and self-gaslighting that has been building up inside of her since the incident. Not to mention the randomness of the epilogue, it just felt out of place to me.

Ellis’s character was well done, and thinking more about it after I finished the book, I can see exactly how her ending was being built. It was all in the small details and her obsession to write everything exactly right, and how that manifested through her obsession with Felicity. I do almost wish that the more occult aspects of the book had been incorporated into the ending, I would have loved for Ellis and Felicity to become a witch lore themselves.

All in all, this was a good book. There are some things I wish had been different, but they didn’t stop me from enjoying Victoria Lee’s beautiful writing and wishing I could go live in a, maybe, haunted Victorian mansion instead of a dorm.

A Lesson in Vengeance releases August 3rd

Happy Reading!

A Lesson in Vengeance is a wonderful addition to the YA dark academia genre. The narrator was perfectly unreliable and had me hooked to continue on with the story. It was slow to start, but progressively had me more and more invested. Victoria Lee's writing is wonderfully atmospheric which set the tone excellently for this story.

This book was amazing! The author did such a great job setting the mood and building the characters. I was hooked from the very beginning.

As a big fan of dark acedamia I was excited to finally get to this book. The story definitely starts off with so many questions and pulls you right in. Felicity is back at Dalloway school and we get to learn all about the dark and twisted things that happened last year with her girlfriend. I really enjoyed unraveling what happened and what was going on currently at the school and dormitory! Good read

This story had so much potential, but the biggest issue for me was that it was way too slow, especially the first half of the book. After this, the plot picked up and I became a little more invested. But as I said: had this been done differently, then this might have been a new favourite for me.

DNF at 40% due to bad representation and several other book reviewers having bad experiences with the author.

While the aesthetics of dark academia appeal to me, I find that much of the stories labelled as such never quite meet my expectation, this novel is part of this rule. Clearly written for a YA audience, I found the character voice did not appeal to my more adult-leaning reading preferences.