This is a wonderfully written novel that I will wholeheartedly recommend to my high school students. The LGBTQ+ representation is beautifully done and the characters are wonderfully complex and raw. The author is able to place you into the story from the first page, leaving you wonder-struck and in awe. The writing flows perfectly and genuinely reads like poetry. I am so looking forward to reading more work from this author!

This is a gothic, sapphic all-girls boarding school tale of mystery, magic, murder, and romance. Let your guard down with these characters and they’ll surprise you. One reason I didn’t quite feel immersed was because the 17+18 year old characters acted 26+, which is of course what you do when you are 17-18 at a prestigious boarding school, prepping for Ivy League... but the way the characters carry themselves is sometimes a bit stiff. I hope that we eventually receive the gift of a novella for Eliss and her origin story, there is so much about her I wanted to know.

What a spooky, thrilling ride.

This was like Pretty Little Liars meets Mexican Gothic meets... a haunted house.

This follows students of Dalloway School as things start to go bump in the night and stranger things still.

I think what made this shine was the characters and just the atmosphere of CREEP. Seriously, I was very spooked reading this. I usually can read books at night but I had to make sure the sun was shining bright whenever I went into this one. And those twists!!! I can't.

Please read this!

Thanks to NetGalley & Random House Children's for the early copy in exchange for an honest review. Actual rating is 2.5/5.

This story follows Alex as she returns to her prep school a year after her best friend died. Alex feels haunted by the ghost of her friend and the ghosts of the witches that were murdered over a hundred years ago.

Sooooo....I think this will be a polarizing book. This feels more like a history of fictional witches book and thriller, so don't expect to see a Hogwarts style school here. The school means nothing to the story other than providing a backdrop and morbid history. The characters barely go to classes anyway....lol. I wish it was set at a fancy private college instead of a high school because they all act like college students rather than high schoolers.

I really didn't like the protagonist nor did I like any of the other girls at school. They were very self-absorbed and vapid, I know it's supposed to be a rich preppy school but like, dang, not a single character I can like? At least the protagonist has sympathy going for her but at the 80% mark the sympathy disappeared and I was just getting annoyed at Alex. Definitely not an "everyone is nice" book, ha.

The ending in particular will turn people off. It's a fun mystery/thriller, though, but the pacing got dull. Usually, I'm really bad at solving the mystery but I was able to here, shockingly, so it took the fun out of the book knowing how it ends. :(

Still, if anyone's a fan of "Wilder Girls" and "Don't Tell A Soul" this will be up your alley.

This thriller will keep you in the edge of your seat into the wee hours of the morning.
There are not enough writers that include lgbt characters in their stories.

A Lesson in Vengeance is creepy in all the right ways! You won't be able to put down this dark, atmospheric thriller.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to preview this great book! I look forward to reading more from Victoria Lee in the future.

What a wonderfully creepy, sapphic dark academia! I loved seeing the clear homage to books like The Secret History, but with no men to be found, lots of sapphic romance, and plenty of dark ambition. Atmospheric, page-turning, and full of lush prose.

5/5 stars. To be released August 2021.

A Lesson in Vengeance was the book I have been waiting for. A creepy historical setting, magic/witchcraft, tarot cards, secret societies, mysterious murders, and equally mysterious characters. Victoria Lee creates an atmosphere that will send chills down your spine and make you question exactly who you can trust, because it may not even be your own mind. Lee calls this 'dark academia' and she is absolutely right. It will keep you guessing right up to the final chapters.

Such a good read. The twists and turns were unexpected. I really enjoyed not being able to predict where this was going, as a lot of books in this genre are far too predictable. The main characters had distinct personalities and depth. Highly recommend if LGBTQ fiction and dark academia is your jam.

I will admit, I'm a little disappointed with this book. I thought this would lean more into the witchcraft side of the story but it was much more thriller than paranormal. As a mystery/thriller book it's good but it doesn't play into the paranormal genre as much as it should have. I also really did not like the ending. So I hesitantly give this 3.5/5 stars. I think I might have had my hopes a bit too high for this one.

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee takes place in a girls’ boarding school with a rich history of witchcraft and death. The Dalloway Five were students who all died mysteriously one after the other, and were rumored to be witches. In modern day, Felicity Morrow is returning to Dalloway School one year after her girlfriend’s tragic death. She is determined to get through her final year, but the history of both the witches and her girlfriend are hard to ignore once she’s back at school. New girl Ellis Haley is a novelist interested in writing about the Dalloway Five, so she asks expert Felicity to help her research. Soon history begins to repeat itself as Felicity is drawn to the occult and Ellis.

This book is so dark. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before. The atmosphere of this story borders on the uncomfortable, but is compulsively readable.

A Lesson in Vengeance, as a character study on madness and psychopathy viewed through the lens of feminism-as-witchcraft with a lesbian, dark academia flair, is a fascinating concept. It reads dark and twisty and atmospheric, with characters who are committed to the theme--the typewriters, the elbow patches, the fountain pens, the basket veils! This book goes all in.

Initially, the only thing that gave me pause about it was wondering how on earth the characters were teenagers. They read like upperclassmen undergraduates at Oxford. Maybe even graduate students at Oxford. This book had adult characters packed into the teenage mold of a YA novel, which kept pulling me out of the narrative, which itself began to sag in the middle for me. There was no real hook midway that made me want to continue, so admittedly I skimmed a bit.

The ending was powerful, with a well done sense of spookiness and urgency. It ties together beautifully.

This dark academia dream is perfect for fans of
Ninth House, we were liars, and Truly Devious. Dripping with suspense and atmospheric chills, A Lesson in Vengeance is an exploration of the how far two girls will go to uncover mysteries far beyond their reckoning...and the power they desperately cleave to. This is one to devour in one sitting on a cold Autumn night.

I’m not even sure where to start with this review, having just finished this book. If you’ve read it, you know the rollercoaster I was just on reading the last few chapters. While beautifully written, this book has so many haunting scenes that I know are going to stick with me for the longest time. I wholeheartedly loved this book, don’t get me wrong, but there was so much I just didn’t expect. Full jaw dropping moments as I read, wrapping my head around the plot that was unfolding before my eyes.

The writing pulls you in from the very first page, descriptions paint a picture in your head and not for one second while reading was I left wondering about what a person looked like, a location looked like or what the school felt like. This book has a definite ending but I was still left wanting more, not at all ready to part with Victoria Lee’s writing. They wrote this so well that it was hard to put down, with me finishing this book in nine hours as I constantly went right back to it when I had the time. I was reluctant every single time I stopped reading, needing more.

I try to keep my reviews as spoiler free as I can, I never want to be the reason a book is ruined for a person because they read a review of mine and found out about large plots, or the entire narrative journey, and that is especially hard to stick to with this review. I could write essays about the events that are found within these pages, waiting for August to finally arrive so I can talk about it in great detail. It really has everything: heartbreaking moments, shocking moments that left me with a big question mark above my head, soft and sweet moments before we’re face to face with the stark reality of the truth.

The characters are written so well, even if my enjoyment of this book was because of plot rather than character, a true rarity for me. With mere introductions, you’re shown characters you might be able to relate to but that you can definitely come to support and love. As the book progresses, so do these characters. The experience of reading A Lesson in Vengeance is also constantly learning about the characters whose lives you’re following. Every time I believed to understand a character or their motivation something happened on page, and the idea that I could ever possibly understand them was found to be false.

Words can’t even begin to explain how much I loved this book, from the first page to the last line. It’s the kind of book you need but don’t know it yet, only discovering the whole in your life being filled as you read. It’s just about securing this author a spot in my auto-buy list, and from here I’m just beyond excited to read more of their work and let it pull me in and change my life too!

content warning for violence/murder, some brief animal cruelty
4.5 stars

first things first, this book is a POWERHOUSE. when i heard the pitch - dark academia lesbians - i was automatically invested and then when i picked up the book itself, i was drawn in just by the language and voice. the world-building, the characters, the atmosphere, this book is incredibly well written and i was thoroughly impressed. i think so often, the way you pull off a dark academia book is by getting the aesthetic just right, and this book definitely nailed it. the other key to a good DA book is by writing a mysterious, murder-filled plot and keeping the reader on their toes. and while i think the ending definitely lived up to the hype (which is not easy to do), i did find that some of the plot in the middle left a little to be desired. as with most DA, most of the payoff is in the last 20% of the story. and even though that payoff is definitely well-earned and absolutely lives up to my expectations, i had a difficult time staying invested in the middle of the story. i think a lot of this comes up to personal preference and me just not clicking with the story at all times, but usually when i get invested in a DA book, it's an instantaneous I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS pull, and this book just...doesn't quite have that urgency. towards the end, yes, but from the beginning i couldn't quite tell what mystery we were trying to solve and where the plot was actually going.

but then again...that ENDING...

at the end of the day, i am still incredibly impressed and i think this is such an important book because there are so few (popular) DA stories that feature lesbians to this extent. more than that, i love victoria's writing style and i will definitely pick up more from them in the future!

Dark academia meets witchcraft meets LGBTIQA+ elements? Sign me up! Full of beautiful prose and intellectual language this story is full of hidden magic undiscovered by its characters.
Not only does it deal in the realm of grief and trauma it also brings forth the question of how far one should go in the pursuit of their goals and in the case of Ellis, their art.
I was kept at the edge of my seat devouring page after page until the very end.

Boarding school? Witchcraft? Mysterious murders? Sign me up! Unfortunately, this was just a little less than the sum of its parts, as though the author re-thought the main character a couple of times but thought she could recycle the parts she'd already written.

While this book was great, it didn't quite blow me away like I was hoping it would. I guess my hopes were just a bit too high.