The Last Graduate is wild. I’m torn because the story and character development is amazing, but the writing is very dense and hard to keep up with. As with the first book, most of the book is told to the reader, with little dialogue and a lot of world building. As such, the beginning took some time to get through as there was no clear conflict or resolution that the main character must overcome until nearly the end of the book. We’re aware that all students of the Scholomance need to survive the final trials at graduation since the first book, but this isn’t set into motion until the second half of this book. I will say that the climax of the book is explosive and thrilling, and was easily the strongest part of Graduate.

I wish the writing wasn’t so dense. The paragraphs are long and detailed with extensive world-building, to the point where I can only name off a few creatures because none of them seem important to remember anymore. The author spends much of the book describing why something exists or its importance in the world’s history, but most of it isn’t relevant information for the plot. Dialogue is few and far between; although El clearly speaks to her friends, we don’t actually get much conversations apart from a few lines once in a while. I’ve yet to figure out why Novak deemed certain lines important enough to break away from her standard storytelling as the longest conversation I can remember presented in the book is banter between El and her friends.

El goes through a lot of changes. When we first meet her, she is rude and standoffish and only looks out for herself, but by the end, she comes to care for others and is determined to save everyone. The emotional impact is what made the finale so strong to me. The buildup, the characters and their relationships, El’s growth as a character all came together for an intense final battle that left me wanting more. I am pleased to find out that there will be another book in the series as I’m not quite ready to let El go just yet. 3.5 stars for me!

WHAT JUST HAPPENED AAAHHHH!!! I really enjoyed the first book of this series but this book completely blew me away. Novik's writing of El had me laughing constantly, she's such a fun character to follow. This book was impossible to put down! All the different evil creatures, the craziness of the school, the adorableness of Orion... I am going to be going crazy until the 3rd book comes out!

3.5 stars, rounded up.

The Scholomance and its students has returned. As has the stream of consciousness narration that did the first book many, humorous favors. Unfortunately, it did not do the same in the sequel. It dampened some of the more extreme events in the book and made it hard to understand fully what was going on. In a book that is, conceptually, a bit confusing on its own – this wasn’t a great experience.

As a series continuation, I enjoyed this and it answered many questions I had. It also left things open-ended enough that I am curious about what happens next. From an enjoyment reading-only perspective though, I really struggled with this.

Full review on October 8th, 2021.

Well. I honestly thought this was going to be a duology after all, given the trajectory of the story, but that didn't happen. If you've ever wondered if a middle book in a trilogy that when you boil it down really progresses everything very little until the end could be absolutely enthralling, the answer is yes. It's all in the worldbuilding and a perfectly imperfect main character. Once again mad at myself for reading this early, thus making the wait go even longer for the next one.

My heart is full of love-- I laughed, cried, and felt radicalized by kindness. Holds up. Can't wait for book 3.

Sarcastic, grumpy Galadriel is back in the second installment of The Scholomance series. Facing their final year at Scholomance, El and her delightful band of misfit wizards are determined to survive. When the school seems out to get her alone, El’s only hope of surviving may just be embracing her dark destiny.

I may be the odd one out here by saying I don’t understand why this is a separate book and not just part two of A Deadly Education. The biggest issue I had while reading A Deadly Education was the lack of plot development, the entire book just felt like character driven world building. What The Last Graduate fails to do as a sequel is reaffirm the plot of the last book, instead only referencing it when necessary. It simply jumps right back into the story. Had I read the books with a longer break between them, it would have taken half the book to get back into the groove of it.

That said, the book really was phenomenal. I love the way the story is narrated through Galadriel, so the reader knows as much as she does or doesn’t. It really allows the reader to be immersed into the plot and connect to the characters, because you feel like you are one of the characters. This book also put more time into developing the gaps in the magic system and in the function of the school that were missing from A Deadly Education. The writing is wonderful, the pacing is great, El’s character development was incredible. The only thing I really wanted was more Orion.

I’ll be thinking about the ending obsessively until the third installment.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I love the premise behind this story, and once again Galadriel, or El, and her boyfriend Orien are rising seniors coming up to graduate. But, unlike a mundane school with pomp and circumstance, their ceremony will be a fight for their lives against mals, sneaky monsters with various gruesome abilities. El is determined to change the status quo, and create a way for all the students to safely exit the Scholomance. To do so, she'll have to accomplish something never before seen or even suggested: create widespread alliances between all students, working together and sharing resources to battle against the insidious foes. There's a dramatic cliffhanger at the conclusion that will leave you breathless and waiting for book three! I can't wait to find out what happens next.

The Last Graduate is a great follow-up to A Deadly Education. It picks up right where A Deadly Education leaves off and follows El, and her friends through their senior year at the Scholomance. The Scholomance is a magical school unlike most you've read about. It is much darker than most "school for magical kids" stories and that was one thing I really enjoyed about it. I read The Last Graduate in one day and this was no exception, I read the whole book start to finish in one sitting.

The setting and world building are one of my favorite aspects of this book. Naomi Novik writes great, really detailed and vivid descriptions that make you feel like you are in the Scholomance. The magic system is pretty well developed and really unique. I haven't read anything else like it and I read a lot of young adult fantasy and have read countless magical school fantasy series.

El is also one of my favorite characters I have read lately. There is great character growth and development from the first book to this one, and great development throughout this book as well. I can't read books any longer where the characters don't change or grow at all. El's growing realizations that her friends care about her and will stick around really showed how much she has grown from the first book.

I would recommend this book to fans of young adult fantasy with a darker twist. The book ends on a huge cliffhanger and I will be counting down until the third book will be released.

Thank you to netgalley and Random House for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

4.5
Thank you netgalley for this arc.

If you like dark magic & academy books, this one you will love.

I also loved the ending.

Kudos to Naomi Novak!

My jaw is dropped.

El’s senior year starts off strangely. Only she, and the freshmen students she’s been thrown in with for a class, are being constantly attacked by the mals.

Regardless of her new affiliation with Orion this only increases the distrust other students have for her (except her besties).

Then alliances start to become a necessity as graduation looms. The school seems to be throwing everything it can at them at higher and higher levels. To what end? Maybe not what you’d think.

Also El and Orion continue to grow closer and want more from and for each other. How will that impact their graduation when it’s always been everyone for themselves?

Dad gum this ends on a hell of a cliffhanger. I cannot wait for the next piece of this story.

Naomi Novak is a brilliant storyteller. The Last Graduate is book two of the Scholomance series and does not disappoint. El finds herself in her senior year facing a horrifying graduation day full of mals. This book drew me in and did not let me go. I can not wait to find out what book 3 entails! This is a must read!!

A Deadly Education was one of my favorite reads last year and I can honestly say The Last Graduate was even better. It is a tough one to review because I don't want to give anything away. Let's just say that it is a bit of a rollercoaster ride and as soon as I think I can predict the whole book, the game changes.

It picks up where it left off, which I always enjoy. The school decides to send loads of mals at El and we can laugh at the irony that Orion isn't getting any mals and it is making him miserable. El has a lot of character growth in this book. El and Orion evolve beautifully, but he is barely in the book for a while. The ending has a terrible cliffhanger and I would love to peek at the last book to see how it plays out.

If I could force Owlcrate to do a special edition of this book that matches their first, I totally would.

THE LAST GRADUATE still has been thinking two days after I finished the book, reviewing in my mind the events and considering and caring about the characters.

Novik is a master worldbuilder. And that was my takeaway from the first installment of this series. And the writing style of this, first person confessional, makes the reader submerged not only in the word, but El's mind. The character arc between this book and the last is truly magical. TLG, more than the first book in this series, had me engaged in a clear plot arc-- but similarly leaves the reader on a jarring cliff-hanger.

Despite all these positive aspects of the reading experience, I do feel a little bit at the mercy of the storyteller, which was the frustration of the last book as well (which made the read a challenge). We aren't 100% taught the rules of the world beforehand in order to see and predict how events play out (in a good way!), the narration is much more casual asides, coincides, anecdotes; El tells us what we need to know as it happens. This book could build on reader knowledge (we know some of the monsters and what they do and how magic works) which lets the characters, story, and emotion of this book feel like MORE-- more stakes for the reader, more connection to the characters, more investment in the story.

I was totally swept away-- even though I wanted to be even further on the inside of the book's construction.

Thank you for NetGalley and Ballantine for the chance to read. I truly enjoyed the experience.

The Last Graduate is the second installment of Naomi Novik’s Scholomance trilogy, and it picks up with Galadriel, our moody, prickly protagonist, as a senior. Oh El, how I’ve missed your grumpy self! Now that she is in her last year at the Scholomance, El is staring down her potentially fatal exit from the school as the clock ticks down to graduation day. To make matters even more intense, the school has assigned her a brutal last schedule and saddled her with a gaggle of nervous freshmen to watch over like a mama hen.

The icing on the terrifying school cake is that El is still the target of some of her classmates’ suspicions and attacks. One junior places a hex on her library classroom in a bungled attempt to drain El and her freshmen of their mana. When El pushes the spell back on the caster, not knowing it was placed by another student, she only realizes what she’s done after the student’s skin flies off of him in class and he runs around in circles screaming until he dies. Behold your dark goddess! Yes, El is even more of a powerful badass in this book.

Now let’s talk about my favorite character – El’s familiar, Precious the mouse! She rides around in a little cup El wears, and she kind of bosses the humans around through disapproving bites. She's a little spot of cuteness in the nightmare prison that is life in the Scholomance. Fingers crossed she and all the other little mice familiars have an even bigger role in the next book.

The Last Graduate is all darkness, magic, action, monsters, and world-building with a little bit of romance thrown in – a winning combination. However, it is the romance between El and Orion that is the weak point of the series. I like both characters separately, but there isn’t much chemistry between them. El, in fact, describes her feelings towards Orion as being similar to a “mindworm infestation,” which is hilarious but also spot on – she seems annoyed by him all the time and I just don’t buy them as a couple. Minus one star for the tepid love story.

Underwhelming romance aside, the moment when the title of the book finally makes sense is absolutely electric – I think my jaw dropped and I started cheering for El. Then the story has the nerve to end on a dramatic cliffhanger! I am desperate for the final book and can’t recommend this series enough for any fantasy fan.

I am utterly ruined after reading this book!

The second book picks up right from where the first one ended, and we all know how much that the last line of A Deadly Education had troubled us and The Last Graduate does follow in with the first one's footsteps...But we'll talk about that one later!

As we all know that A Deadly Education had not answered most of our questions and most specifically the answers about the machinations of the scholomance. The Last Graduate delves deeper into the scholomance and gives us more understanding of how it works!

The best feature of this book is certainly the subtle ways in which we get to see how El has changed just because of spending time with Orion. (both of them are just so sweet together-you'll get all those moments that we wanted but didn't get in A Deadly Education). Moreover, it's not just the slight contrast we see on El after the events of book 1 but also we get even more character development of El throughout this book. The ending and start of this book have some very stark differences. Also, we get so much foreshadowing that most people will miss all those moments while reading them but get to know about them all when they move further into the story!

I absolutely loved the way this story is paced and El is the most wonderful narrator who can add humor to even the bleakest of situations. She's the biggest baddest bitch of all female characters that I have come across!

And that ending??!! I am not in that emotional range right now to even talk about that ending! For all the people who've read the previous book-the cliffhanger in this book is even more deadly than in A Deadly Education.

(The review will be posted 10 days before the release i.e. 18 Sept on my blog https://readndazzled.wordpress.com/ and on the release date on my Instagram{https://www.instagram.com/read.n.dazzled/} My favorite quotes will also be published on my blog on the release date!)

The Last Graduate picks up exactly where book one left off. El played the hero at the end of book one and the Scholomance is determined to make her pay dearly. What is the meaning of her mother's note? And how will we make it to graduation this year?
Novik does a brilliant job of continuous worldbuilding, even throughout book two. Book one established the world of the Scholomance, but book two explains many of the logistical questions that book one left us with. I like to think that the Scholomance could exist in some Night Vale sister universe.

El has softened up a bit. She's still a brilliant character, but much less angsty and much less sarcastic than the girl we met at the onset of A Deadly Education. Oh - and much more conflicted now that she doesn't pretend to just absolutely loathe humanity.

Halfway through the book, I was starting to feel as if the story was dragging and thinking that rewriting the book as a series of diary entries might actually be the better approach to how Novik is telling the story. Then I got to the last 150 pages and I DON'T CARE. IT'S BRILLIANT.

Like El, we've all been mislead since day one. And the sudden change of perspective is so incredibly interesting. Brilliantly, brilliantly done, Novik. Bravo.

And the ending. THE ENDING. Guess I'm committed to reading book 3 now! Thanks for a fabulous adventure, Novik!

Thank you #NetGalley and Random House for the ARC!
To be posted on release date (9/28/21) on https://allisonsbookishramblings.blogspot.com/

Are you kidding me???!!!!! The ending, the freaking huge cliffhanger. Its been a long time since I finished a book and wanted to throw it across the room screaming because of the ending.

Now that I've calmed down a bit. I really enjoy the relationship between El and Orion. It feels like what two horny teens really would do. I appreciated the accurate sex scene ( not spicy but you got the drift). I like that El has opened up herself and how much he life changed because of it.

Now I have to wait a year to find out what happens and hope I'm able to get another ARC.

First off, Naomi Novik caught me slipping, and that's on me. I definitely thought this was a duology and not a trilogy or series. So really, it's my fault that the very ending line, like the ending line of the first one, made me want to holler. That out of the way, this was a THOROUGHLY enjoyable read. Alliances are made, friendships are strengthened, plots are hatched, etc etc etc. An excellent solid middle book (don't say /i/ didn't warn you).

Think of The Last Graduate as a pot of water, and you’re the frog happily splashing around in it, until suddenly you realize the water’s slowly been getting hotter and now it’s boiling and you’re left going “ohno ohno ohno oHNO.” Yes. That is this book.

TLG takes everything good and glorious from its predecessor and makes it even more magnificent. The character depth is extraordinary—El and Orion will forever go down as two of my favorite literary characters, and their relationship is one for the books. TLG has tremendous heights and abysmal depths—we see the characters fight, laugh, cry, all of it. I laughed aloud many, many times, and had to recline with smelling salts several others. Naomi Novik is a master of voice, character, and world-building, wielding dark humor to layer a killer story.

Anyway, I finished TLG sometime around midnight and couldn’t peel my gaze from the ceiling for about half an hr before I could pull the feels and thoughts together enough to function. I will hereby camp out on my front door until my future pre-order of book 3 arrives. Meanwhile, if you’d like to sign my petition requesting that future books henceforth be published as a complete finished series, please send a carrier pigeon (or mouse familiar) my way.

Eternal gratitude and reverent awe to Netgalley and the publisher for this e-arc of my most anticipated read of the year.

-Ande

I have no words for this book. I literally sat and stared blankly at a wall foe a few minutes after I read the word. And boy, I was glad to find out that there is going to be another book after this. Naomi Novik knows how to leave to you wanting more yet some how I still remain fulfilled at how the book ended.