Both Ninth House and The Dead and the Dark were fabulous, captivating reads for me, and I’m always up for reading dark academia.

Tara made it to Corbin College on her own with no support from family or friends. To her deep disappointment, she wasn’t accepted into Magni Viri, an elite academic society that would have covered her tuition and offered extraordinary opportunities. To help with expenses, she works on campus as a janitor as she envisions years of student loan payments in her future.

The tragic death of a Magni Viri student creates an opening, and although Tara’s saddened by the circumstances, it’s an opportunity she can’t turn down. For the first time in her life, she has friends (Magni Viri take care of their own) and a feeling of belonging she’s never experienced. If you’re thinking this story has a happily ever after, think again.

Vows made over graves in a dark cemetery, an unseen presence that seems to follow Tara, pages of writing in her own hand upon waking that Tara has no memory of – all chilling experiences that will keep you flipping pages to learn the macabre secrets. Before long, Tara’s health declines, and she begins to lose hours. Her life is at stake if she doesn’t learn what’s going on.

This story is haunting and full of atmosphere – you might find yourself looking over your shoulder as you read. Tara is an easy person to root for. With everything she’s experienced in her life, you want her to succeed. Parts of the story are a bit repetitive, and I skimmed through those sections, but the ending is highly satisfying. I also appreciated the addition of the epilogue at the end.

Recommended for fans of dark academia, hauntings, and eerie mysteries.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I tried. I really did. I was in my "I need good dark academia / horror" phase. But I got super thrown off and annoyed maybe not even a full chapter in? Might try again at another time, but this was a DNF for me.

All that consumes us was an incredible gothic tale, that I devoured during the fall. It was fast paced with enough tension to keep me going. Dark academia has always been one of my favourite “semi tropes” as people love to call it. But each and every time I read a new one I realise why I read dark academia to begin with. It was a privilege to read this and I’ve re read it twice since publication!

I forgot to leave a review for this, but I really enjoyed it! It's been out for ages, so I won't say much more than I need to for my star rating. <3

Loved the nod to The Secret History. Dark, gloomy academia vibes. Really loved the diverse characters.

Another YA dark academia book that seems to think it needs to just attempt to be a ninth House and it’ll be good. It wasn’t. I ended up DNFing this as about 40% sadly. The main character was unbearable and obsessed with being like someone else, which turns out isn’t super fun to read. Also the relationships were already super underdeveloped for already being 40% into the book. I feel like 20% of the book was basically meandering and kind of wasted time. I just didn’t care by the time we actually got to the interesting parts. This is a huge disappointment for me, but some other people may enjoy this one.

Thanks NetGalley for an e-ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Edelwiess for the advanced copy of this book!

I really loved the atmosphere of this book. This dark academia follows Tara, who is a freshman at Magna Viri. From the outset she’s an outsider but her resiliency and need to prove herself are some of my favorite aspects of the character.

I found the queer romance to be absolutely adorable, but a bit underdeveloped. I would have liked a bit more detail. And honestly that’s my main gripe with the book as a whole. I just kind of want more of everything.

I was absolutely blown away while reading this book! Words woven to reveal deep imagery, steeped in dark academia vibes. The characters are crisp and vibrant, the story easily to follow and interesting enough to have kept me up past my bedtime reading.

Taking place at a college following the main character and her managing her way from an average student, on the outside looking in on a secret society to becoming one of them. But that’s where the story really begins!

All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters is hauntingly beautiful and possessed me immediately. The dark academia and gothic vibes were perfectly executed and I couldn't help but imagine Corbin College nestled in the dark mountains of Tennessee like some dark Spectre. The vibes made me think of Nevermore Academy or Brakebills College with the academic worldbuilding and supernatural realism. Jane Eyre is my favorite classic story and you can see it's inspiration throughout this tale. The slow dive into madness and the haunted brilliance of the characters captivated me and the spiral towards the explosive ending was amazing! I love this book and will definitely be purchasing a hard copy and following the author.

A dark fantasy/horror/academia novel - so right up my alley! Tara is floundering at Corbin College - both academically and financially. But then a member of the elusive Magni Viri is tragically found dead and suddenly Tara is given her spot. Once there, her financial woes are gone and she is starting to do well in her classes and in her writing. But there is something off about Magni Viri, something off about the writing that she does at all hours of the night. Will Tara discover Magni Viri’s secrets before it’s too late?

Hard to put down - quite the gripping read! I liked all of the characters and the descriptions of Corbin College and its environs were spot on gothic. Tara (despite being my namesake) was harder to get into in the first half of the book though.

Unfortunately, I wanted this to be much darker than it was and while I was intrigued by the beginning of the novel it definitely ended up disappointing me by the end. An average read that I'll probably forget but a good recommendation if you have a younger reader or someone who's just dipping their toes into horror and are nervous about the genre.

While this book took me a little bit to get into, it has some absolutely stunning gothic and dark academia vibes, as well as mystery curling throughout the story like smoke. Erica Waters uses her trademark southern gothic horror to create an eerie collegiate atmosphere and a secret society that’s even more sinister than it originally seems. In some ways, it felt like Lee Mandelo’s novel, SUMMER SONS, though ALL THAT CONSUMES definitely has more of an academic vibe. I’m not sure what exactly it was that didn’t click for me, although I think I wish some elements of the mystery were worked into the overall flow of the story better. And while I didn’t dislike the romance, I wasn’t just head over heels either. For me, the best parts of this book are the vibes, and also all the relationships that our main character, Tara, creates throughout. If you’re looking for something to fit a cloudy day or sinister creativity, this is definitely one to pick up!

When the book begins, Tara seems very intent on going it alone because she’s had to go it alone basically her entire life. Getting into the secret society, Magni Viri is a chance to have a community, but that community doesn’t end up being what she thinks. But the people that Tara learns to lean on, and who can lean on her in return, were what made this book so much more enjoyable in the second half than in the first. I also love the vibes of the novella that Tara is writing, even if it ends up being a lot darker, for several reasons, than she might have originally thought. Again, if it seems like your vibe, it’s worth checking out.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this novel. I was allowed to read for free from NetGalley and give this review of my own opinion with no persuasion. #NetGalley #AllThatConsumesUs

Queer? Check. Gothic? Check. Dark academia? Check. Erica Waters brought all of my favorite things to the table and I ate it up.

I was interested in this book because I had read and enjoyed The River Has Teeth. Going into this, I had high hopes, and hoo boy, it did not disappoint. Waters is VERY good at creating an eerie and unsettling atmosphere. The mystery that was built throughout this book was intriguing and kept me captivated until the very last page. Overall the plot and setting in this book were very strong.

I mention in almost every review that I am a huge character reader. My favorite part of any book tends to be the characters, and that is still true for this one. I absolutely loved the found family aspect of this book. However, the romance was not the strongest. If you are wanting to read a romance, this is not the one for you. It's not that the romance is weak. It's just that the romance is not the focus of this book. But it's always important to know what you're getting into.

Overall, definitely give this one a read!

Tara feels like she doesn’t fit in anywhere, so when she’s given a newly-opened spot into her college’s elite group of students, she jumps at the chance for success and built-in friendships. But what started as too good to be true proves that it really is just that.

Erica Waters weaves a darkly poignant tale about elitism and ghosts, and I really enjoyed it. Tara was a relatable narrator, and her descent into the wild world of Magni Viri was exciting and a little bit terrifying. The representation was great and the found family trope was probably my favorite part.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced ebook edition of this title. Opinions are my own.

https://lesbrary.com/all-that-consumes-us-by-erica-waters/

The days have started getting shorter as darkness takes up more and more space every day. The evening air isn’t quite cold enough to keep you inside, but every gust of wind chills to the bone, and the woods behind my apartment are filled with piles of dead foliage sprouting mushrooms. There’s just something about fall that keeps my attention set on horror all season long. It was in that spirit that I picked up All That Consumes Us in October, a book which bills itself as a “gothic dark academia novel.” That alone was enough to get me interested, but by the time I was done, Erica Waters’s latest work easily made the list of my favorite reads this whole year.

It’s safe to say Tara Boone is not having the best time with her freshman year at Corbin College. She longs to be a writer, but she’s stuck working two jobs to pay tuition and taking the education track so that she has even the slightest hope of having a career to pay her student loans with. When she gets a chance to enroll in Magna Viri—an elite, somewhat secretive honor society that only accepts a few students every year and promises free tuition, great jobs, and connections after graduation—she jumps at the chance, even if that chance comes as a direct result of the untimely death of one of Magna Viri’s freshman students.

Magna Viri isn’t quite the godsend it seems, however. Some of the older students seem sick, almost hollowed out, and even her fellow freshmen are beginning to show signs of wear. Tara at first chalks it up to how overbearing and aggressive the group’s advisor is, but it rapidly becomes clear that something far worse is going on as she begins writing in her sleep. She wakes up at her desk again and again with words that aren’t hers scrawled on paper in front of her, a story far darker and more violent than anything she’s ever written before.

Tara is one of the most painfully relatable characters I’ve read in a long time, from the overwhelming impostor syndrome to the constant comparing herself to the more elite students to the feeling like if only she wasn’t being held down by her lack of opportunity maybe, just maybe she could be as good as them. Tara’s every thought and feeling is achingly real because they’re so familiar, in a way that I think just about every working class creative has felt at some point or another.

The supporting cast is also incredibly diverse. Tara’s classmates come from a range of backgrounds and ethnicities. Most of them are queer, her roommate is nonbinary, and the romantic interest has a chronic illness. That diversity isn’t just for show, either; each character’s interaction with the secrets at the core of Magna Viri is fundamentally shaped by their identity. I found all of them to be as well-crafted and memorable as Tara herself. Even as the story becomes more and more supernatural, the characters keep it grounded in a way that makes every punch hit that much harder.

I’m going to put a spoiler warning for below the break here, as well as the content warnings for All That Consumes Us, because I can’t fully describe why I loved this book without revealing a big part of the mystery. If what I’ve said so far intrigues you, I strongly encourage you to go read this book, and then come back for the rest after.

Content warnings: gaslighting, loss of bodily autonomy, possession, underage drinking and alcoholism, emotional abuse and manipulation, and brief scenes including violence, transphobia and misgendering, and hospitals

(SPOILERS BELOW)

The best thing about horror, to me, has always been the metaphor. Good horror, to my mind, isn’t just about sending chills up your spine or giving you that adrenaline rush of fear, it’s about using the safety of fiction to explore the things that frighten us. That includes the obviously terrifying things, like the thought of having your body literally controlled by someone else, but it also includes the awful things that have become so ordinary that we ignore them entirely or even just accept them as part of life, using those obvious things to blow them up to the point where the inherent wrongness of them becomes apparent.

All That Consumes Us has plenty of the former, but it is packed to bursting with the latter. For those of you who read this far without reading the book first, signing up with Magna Viri is signing up to be possessed by the ghost of a former member, someone who’s genius they considered so great that it could not be allowed to disappear just because they died. You create that person’s work for your four years at college, and in exchange you get to put your name on it. It started out with the best of intentions, as a partnership, but overtime became corrupted, and now the students of Magna Viri are being drained utterly dry for the sake of their ghosts.

The ghosts of Magna Viri work incredibly well as a scathing metaphor for so much of what plagues academic and creative work. They are the toxic productivity that demands that we expend ourselves physically or else be considered worthless. They are the commoditization of creation and the treatment of creators as tools that enrich the elite. They are the idea that there are only a few truly great works and everything else is simply derivative. They are the colonization of young, diverse minds, forcing them to focus on mainly the works of dead white men in order to be considered educated, and to mimic them in order to be considered skilled.

All That Consumes Us forces you to reckon with the cruel realities of academia and creation that we all too often take for granted, and it does so in a package that is diverse, suspenseful, compelling, and deeply unsettling. Currently, it’s sitting at the top of my list this year, and I think it’s going to be difficult to dethrone. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

3.75 stars

Thank you netgalley for providing this arc.

For the first third of this book, I didn’t think I was going to like it. As soon as Penny was confirmed to be a love interest though, everything changed. I loved Penny. Her disability representation was extremely well done and I love how flares were mentioned. As well as in one scene where they told her not to remove her shoes because she’s on immunosuppressants and could get an infection if she got cut. Like sometimes authors forget a character has things like that and their disability is just mentioned sometimes like “oh she has some pain in her knee rn” or something, but that was a great detail. I liked Wren as well. I found it interesting how all of them were so manipulated by their ghosts, Wren especially. I do have to say, I thought it was stupid that she thought she could get rid of her by just dumping her bones somewhere else? Girl😭come one now we are not this naive. Anyways, I ended up really enjoying it, mostly because of the disability rep. It’s rare that someone gets it right, and this book did. And the added sapphic ship was awesome ofc.

I received this book for free for an honest unbiased review from Netgalley.

I wish more books were this well written. Characters were witty and the setting fantastic.

Special thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was really good. The beginning was amazing, I just wish that the pacing was more consistent (I found myself getting bored at times in the middle of the book).