Thank you to NetGalley, Redhook, and Orbit Books for providing me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was written beautifully. The author has an amazing way with words. My favorite aspect of this book was how beautifully she set the scenes. You can really picture all of the places and I loved the lush descriptions. My personal favorite was the Halloween party but I also loved the townhouse party and Christmas at the apartment.

While the authors writing is very eloquent, I felt that the pacing of the story is off. Some of the big reveals I found underwhelming and flat. There were many times I felt like the story was moving too quickly and wished we could have had a little more dialogue and character interactions. Other times I felt the story was dragging a little bit.

Overall, while I loved the flowery prose it felt like it was overcompensating and lacking depth. I just think wanted more out of the characters and the storyline.

4.5 stars
I actually don't really know how to describe this book, but it would involve a lot of positive words. Gibson is incredible at creating deep, ambiguous relationships between truly human people. I love the tension they capture, both between characters and with the plot. In this book specifically, there's this inherently taboo feeling created with the chills the poetry creates, hot-and-cold dynamics between characters, and suspicion felt for everyone. I read this almost in one sitting (I took a lunch break), and really loved it. I felt the final bit of the ending was somewhat abrupt, which is the reason for the half star off, but I overall really loved this one, possibly more than A Dowry of Blood since the storytelling was a bit less convoluted.

This was my first ST Gibson book and I really, really enjoyed it! This is a sapphic, dark academia set int he 80's on a college campus and it's such an enchanting ride! This story centers around Laura, Carmilla and their mysterious professor. This is a story of love, blood and secrets. The writing is so beautiful and I'll definitely read more from this author!

An Education in Malice
An explosive novel that grabs you by neck and doesn’t let go! S.T Gibson blew my mind with this Sapphic Dark Carmilla retelling! This dual pov follows Laura, Carmilla, and Professor De Lafontaine (not a pov but a MC) while they are at Saint Perpetua’s College. I absolutely adored this book and the authors writing. She not only rocked the slow burn and spice game but the world building, plot line and story telling was magical and memorable as well. S.T. Gibson’s novels are always in my opinion too tier and so unique and interesting and she didn’t let it slip with this one either! I loved the little Easter eggs and characters cameos from A Dowry of Blood which I am rereading!! Just all around another must read book from a must read author!

If you love 🖤

🖤 Plus Size Heroine
🖤 Academic Rivals to Lovers
🖤 Kink and Exhibitionism
🖤 Toxic 1960s Poetry Cohort
🖤 Debauched Vampire House Parties

Genre/Type: Dark romance or Dark Academia
APK: Physical
Pages: 368
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

ST Gibson has done it again! This book is an incredible companion to A Dowry of Blood. I literally could not put either book down once I started - I read A Dowry of Blood in one sitting and An Education In Malice in one day.

This is, in my humble opinion, the best kind of retelling: one that holds onto the themes and major points from the original, but reimagines the story to fit its setting and does not try to execute every single plot event in a way that ends up feeling hokey. Here we have Laura and Carmilla and a tale of high society, vampires and obsessive desire, but it’s wholly adapted to its setting - St Perpetua women’s college in 1968. ST Gibson’s prose is beautiful and her characters are compelling. I loved the appearances of characters from A Dowry of Blood, and the atmosphere was wonderfully gothic, dark and alluring.

The original Carmilla has been analyzed to death by people much smarter than I am, but it ultimately leaves it to the reader to decide whether Carmilla acted of her own accord. Was she intentionally entangling poor Laura in a sordid vampiric affair, or was she also a victim of her own nature and circumstance? This is where Gibson’s Carmilla and Laura differ from their namesakes. Even if they have been sucked into a world where they feel in over their heads, they are no passive victims of circumstance. And even more interesting, Carmilla is very explicitly not the monster of this tale. If anything, she is a victim of the same kind of dynamic that her original counterpart inflicted upon Laura.

De Lafontaine was also a very interesting character pulled from the original tale, but given a much expanded role. Of course no dark academia book would be complete without the brilliant and predatory professor, but De Lafontaine was so much more than that. Her actions at the end of the book made me think back to A Dowry of Blood, and in a way this book feels like an answer to Constanta’s harrowing tale. Both explore obsessive, possessive desire, but they look at it through disparate lenses and the obsessive affairs in each end very differently.

All in all, this book was fantastic. It’s a must-read for fans of dark academia, gothic horror, and vampires, and it’s cemented ST Gibson as one of my favorite authors in the genre.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC!

This was my first read by S.T. Gibson and I must say wow.. I was not sure what I was thinking the book was going to be like but I was not expecting what I read. I will say to make sure to read the trigger warnings that Gibson had at the beginning because it rings true within this novel.

I personally have been loving this influx of retellings happening over the last few years for pieces of outdated literature. As a Gothic Studies focus during my MA, I use opportunities like this to look at the differences and similarities between the original and retelling. Gibson writes beautiful, dark and smoky sentences that made me want to devour every sentence that was written. She was able to breathe air into the original characters and make them a lot more enjoyable to read about.

This book looks at Laura Sheridan (little wink at the original author) and Carmilla and the relationship that starts with jealousy and anger to love and need. These two college youths fall under the wings of the poetry professor, who has a secret she is hiding. This story shows the blossom of a new love between two women during a time that it was not openly okay to be gay and develops into a new world open to their kinks and wants in the relationship.

The only reason this book did not receive a 5 star from me was that the ending seemed to be sped up with no actual consequences seen. Gibson tries to explain the dangers that were approaching but it never felt as serious as it should have. Although that was lacking I adored this retelling and can't wait to see what else Gibson creates in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley, Redhook, and Orbit for allowing me access to the E-arc.

This is the first book from S. T. Gibson that I have read. It definitely gives a gothic atmosphere and dark academia vibes that is set at a women’s college. It’s a vampire x sapphic with romance. Laura and Carmilla are in an intense rivalry for the approval of their poetry professor, De Lafontaine. Intense devotion and fascination reveal the secrets that are hidden at the college.

It was a very interesting read! I highly recommend it!

Y’all I really wanted to love this. I had high hopes for it after A Dowry of Blood but it was just ok. The beginning had promise but it was just kinda boring. This needed something more to it, the whole character driven thing didn’t work here. I liked Laura and Carmillas relationship and found that interesting. I liked the relationship between the professor and the girls. But trying to do both made it where neither really shined. I will definitely read from this author again but this one was just meh.

I really loved Dowry of Blood so I was super excited to start this! While it is a retelling of sorts it has so many unique qualities that it felt like a totally different book (in a good way) the atmosphere was amazing and the characters were well thought out. I will say my only complaint is that towards the end we started to be told a lot of things instead of shown, which isn't a huge deal and didn't really affect my overall enjoyment of the book!

If you like gothic academia you will enjoy this book. Vampires, obsession, tension. All the good stuff. Worth the read.

4/5✨

I have to start my review stating that I received an advanced reader copy through NetGalley.

An Education in Malice

S.T. Gibson is truly a poet when it comes to her writing style. It’s SO hard not to be absolutely captivated by her writing. I flew through this book because I just could not put it down!

We’ve got a rich exchange girl, a small town “nobody”, and a lost romantic heart of an older woman just trying to find her own family.

The mommy issues are strong with all the characters and I’m here for it.

A rich dark sapphic academia. I don’t feel like gothic gets to the point of it just because there’s vampires involved.

Also getting to the vampires as they are not the main focal point, they’re just a part of the story.

This is about found family, passion, obsession, and fraught relationships.

I adored this book.

Giving this a 4/5 stars. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I am a sucker for a good vampire novel and this is my first S.T. Gibson novel which adds a layer of dark academia to the already dark vampire trope. I have mixed feelings on the trauma waterfall that is Carmilla, Laura, and De LeFontaine. I wish we got to see more of Elenore and Maisy to properly foil the leads.

Carmilla is a firecracker from start to finish and a delight to read. I would love to see another novel following her adventures. I wanted to like Laura more, but she felt a little Mary Sue to me, and her kink felt a little out of left field for her character (though I appreciated the introverted domme). A prequel novella that gives us more insight into these two prior to attending Saint Perpetua would be divine!

Excited to read more of Gibson's books!

S.T. Gibson has completely redefined what a vampire novel means and in doing so has given entire new levels to my love for them. An Education in Malice is a brilliant Carmella retelling set in the most perfect dark academia university. Set in the same world as A Dowry of Blood (another phenomenal vampire retelling) these stories have an absolute chokehold on me like no other retellings I’ve ever encountered. Yes there are the classic gripping elements of vampire novels, the blood, the fangs and so on, but Gibson weaves in the pain, the misery, the loneliness that is experienced. She describes the change and the hunger. Gibson highlights how human all her characters are in their core and she takes the reader along for the heartbreaking journey.

Gibson’s writing is both eloquent and poetic and easy to fly through. The details draw the reader in almost as much as the gripping sense of mystery and lust that floats through the pages. The manner in which love and affection are unapologetically displayed as fluid and limitless was one of my favorite elements. Relationships in An Education in Malice are complicated yet full of love and passion. Many different types of relationships are represented in Gibson’s work and these relationships are not portrayed as “different” or “unique” they are just love.

Another aspect I enjoyed was how the chapters switch perspectives between our two main characters. We get both Laura and Carmilla's’ points of view. Gibson is quickly becoming a favorite author of mine and I find that if she writes the book, I will not be disappointed.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Orbit Books for this arc in exchange for my honest thoughts and opinions.

I'm unsure how to rate this book, to be honest. I enjoyed Dowry of Blood, the author's previous book, and I loved Carmilla, the source material on which this book is based, and yet the alchemy of two promising ingredients somehow didn't combine as well as I'd hoped. The premise was intriguing, and the overall plot was interesting, but the journey from start to finish fell kind of flat for me. I spent the majority of my time with this book debating whether to DNF or not, and I kept giving it one more chapter - but at about the 25% mark I decided to speed read and skim the pages rather than linger, which was the only way I could finish it.

Logically, many things didn't add up - a character purposely failed all of her classes for two years at her previous school but was still able to transfer to a different university as a junior instead of a freshman or sophomore without retaking anything. A brand new freshman already has a declared major before day one (is that a thing at some schools? Because at mine it wasn't). Professors can set their own ridiculously strict academic policies outside of the university administration's, including expulsion for the first late assignment. Students who are so burdened with a heavy workload that they barely have time to eat or sleep somehow find the time to hang out in the library every day, aimlessly wandering the stacks for hours, trailing their fingers lovingly over the books and just soaking up vibes (and ferreting out dusty volumes of Victorian porn. Which, I mean, fine, but don't you have work to do?)

I think this is the book that finally convinced me that dark academia just isn't my thing. It annoys me when characters tell us in first person how smart they are, and what good writers they are - show us, dont tell us. It annoys me that characters who are full-time students, with a full course load, devote all their waking hours to that ONE all-consuming class that is their heart's blood, and where they are part of an elite group of students hand-selected by a prestigious, charismatic, and mercurial (toxic) professor whose approval they're desperate to win. And it annoys me that characters somehow manage to do well in all their other classes despite putting in no effort on anything but that ONE class. If you only work on one class, and screw the pooch on all the rest, you're going to flunk out, even if you're not also chasing mysteries, going to parties, bantering and hooking up with brooding rivals, joining secret cults, drinking with your professor, working on their morally questionable pet projects, summoning the undead, or whatever else main characters do in dark academia. I think I'm officially done with the genre.

Anyway. The characters in this book were interesting but not fully developed, and hard to connect with. I loved that the book was wholeheartedly Sapphic, but I found the enemies-to-lovers friction train to be a bit rushed, and I preferred the characters when they were yearning and conflicted. I did like that their relationship was still marked by care and mutual respect, even when they couldn't stand each other, which is more than I can say about a lot of romance/smut. The vampire plotline was promising, but it took quite awhile to really get going and I wish the pacing had pulled me in more.

So to summarize: there were elements in this book I enjoyed, and elements I didn't, and I found the writing style to be inconsistent - lush and lyrical in places, irritating and awkward in others. It was a mixed bag, which is why I'm so conflicted about how to rate it. I did finish it - but lightly, quickly, and efficiently, instead of lingering lovingly in the lines as I prefer to do. I was looking forward to this book, and perhaps I simply wasn't in the right mood for it, but unfortunately I just didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped.

Thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with a free advance reader copy of the book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Dark academia vampire romance. It’s hard to come up with any four words more compelling than those when describing this book. I do feel the need to throw in sapphic for the lady lovers out there because this was sapphic love at its finest. I tend to find dark academia books very hit or miss for myself, I’m not entirely sure what, it’s just one of those genres where I am either all out in to the book, or I struggle with it immensely. Possibly because it’s such an enthralling genre to me and I just wind up with incredibly high expectations because it seems like the perfect combination of genres in my eyes. An Education in Malice was one of those dark academia books that had me hooked so fast I was never really able to stop until I reached the end.

Carmilla was a force from the first sentence she was introduced and I could tell she was the kind of character that was beguiling and undoubtedly would wreck people’s lives. Her immediate, intense impression goes to show just how well written of a character she is and I could tell I was in for a wild ride and that I was going to be immediately hooked. S. T. Gibson is a phenomenal writer and I am blown away by how well written her characters are. She is definitely the kind of character you love to hate, because she’s an entitled, brat of a rich girl, and yet I still couldn’t help but root for her at times. It was easy to understand Laura’s fascination with her.

Then there’s De Lafontaine, the professor that Carmilla is incredibly infatuated with, who has many secrets that Carmilla has barely touched the surface on. Enter Laura who slowly learns these secrets as well, and finds herself immersed in a supernatural world she had no idea of. The interactions between these three were so intense and full of tons of strong emotions from each character. From Carmilla and Laura, the students who just want positive reinforcement from their teacher, to the teacher herself who is in a way manipulative of these young girls she knows she has a strong influence over. It was very enthralling seeing the three interact with one another and wondering what each character was really thinking or how they reacted to events taking place.

The strength of this novel was definitely the complicated relationships between the characters, especially De Lafontaine and Carmilla, though the dynamic between the three of them steadily becomes more enthralling. The plot itself is a bit of a slow burn, but because the characters and their relationships with one another are so central to the story being told, this makes sense for An Education in Malice and therefore works. It is a story of love and the things we will do for love above all else.

I enjoyed An Education in Malice very much and like S. T. Gibson’s writing style, which combined means I am very excited to pick up more of this authors books in future. I definitely recommend!

4 Stars overall. I enjoyed this book, but I think it has room to expand the world and get a little more in depth with the characters.

Laura is a freshmen at Saint Perpetua’s College. Studying poetry, she is quickly enthralled by her poetry professor, De Lafontaine, and her prized pupil, Carmilla. As Laura’s talent for poetry starts to shine, we see a bit of a rivalry blossom between Laura and Carmilla as they compete with each other in class, and for the attention of their professor.

As things start to spiral, secrets are revealed and their lives are irrevocably changed. This is a Sapphic, enthralling book of dark academia and Vampirism.

The beginning of the book was very interesting as we got into the world building and were discovering secrets and seeing the characters pitted against each other and interacting. The second half of the book started to slow down for me as I felt I was more being told what was happening than “shown”.

Thank you NetGalley & Orbit for the e-ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I think ST Gibson could publish anything and I would love it. I loved Dowry and I love AEIM even more. The prose is incredibly rich and lyrical, I'm obsessed with the setting and the atmosphere, and I don't think I'll ever be over the chemistry and the tension between the romantic leads. If you like sapphic stories, dark academia, vampires, or any combination of the three, read this now

I’ve never read the classic Carmilla, so I can’t compare or claim it is a retelling, but based on other reviews, I guess it is! I’ve downloaded the classic though, and will be reading to remedy that asap.

An Education in Malice is a dark academia, sapphic vampire novel. The book definitely gives off Gothic vibes due to its location, St. Perpetua’s College, which is an old women’s college with catacombs, and creatures of the night..

I felt like the setting of the novel was well done, creating the creepy atmosphere the book takes place in. The character development was also well done, though I felt like Laura’s transformation from timid and underwhelming, to someone domineering and sexual happened quite abruptly. The cast of characters was diverse, and every one added to the story wonderfully.

The writing itself was well done, and flowed smoothly and poetically, making reading this book a pleasure. Overall, I enjoyed this book. It has some spice, romance, murder, gore, uneven power balances, an enemies to lovers storyline, and some wonderful friendships.

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really struggled to get into this. I tried but it felt like even the characters didn't want to be connected with and I never got to the part where I could sink my teeth into the dark academia of it all. I was going to mark this as DNF by chapter two but felt I had to continue; to give it a fair shot. Chapter four was a struggle and I gave up by chapter six.

I was not the intended audience for this one unfortunately.

S. T. Gibson is becoming a household name in the book world and I am loving it for the author. As soon as I heard that the legend is releasing another book after a successful and major debut, I ran as quickly as I could to request for an ARC.

While the plot was definitely eye-catching, I think what makes this book and her other book delectable is indeed the writing. The way the author does world building and how it builds up the dark academia aspect was perfect in its own way and enjoyable to read.

For those of you who wish to have a book about sapphics in a gothic-slash-dark academia setting (oh and let’s not forget the beloved creatures of the night known as vampires), please give this a go!