First of all, EXCUSE ME????
Second of all, I BEG YOUR FINEST PARDON???
Thirdly, HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME CARE ABOUT THESE CHARACTERS AND THEN DO THAT TO THEM?????
That Devil, Ambition was so good. The commentary on academia and what it takes to succeed and be considered useful in society (if you aren’t absurdly rich) was top tier and I will be thinking about it for days. All of these characters were so flawed and terrible and just doing their best. And I love all of them so, so much.
Thank you to HarperCollins for the review copy. If I can get their billing address for my upcoming therapy bills it would be much appreciated.

Thank you so much to HarperCollins UK and Linsey Miller for sending me an eARC of That Devil, Ambition!
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I absolutely DEVOURED this book. It singlehandedly freed me from the cold clutches of a reading slump and had me HOOKED from the very beginning. The world-building, the writing, the character development, the obsession with academic pursuits, the STAKES — it all blended together to achieve dark academia done RIGHT. 
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We get three POVS. Fabian, Credence and Euphemia. They all offered different perspectives and I enjoyed every single one. The ambition, the desperation, the hopelessness, the disappointment, the devastation, the betrayal, the hard choices, the heartbreak — oh it was done so deliciously well. If you want YA morally grey characters who are actually YA morally grey, you NEED to read this book because I’m obsessed.
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I also REALLY enjoyed the characterisation of the Professor (aka the Devil). Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that he wasn’t quite what I expected (in a good way) and I appreciated that he had DEPTH and LAYERS to his characterisation. 
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Overall, 10/10 would recommend. I don’t have the words to describe how PERFECT this book was other than to say everything about it was *chefs kiss* !!! It’s definitely something I’d read again and definitely something I’ll be recommending to everyone!

The atmosphere of this book is absolutely delectable. It is dark academia at its best without being overplayed or cliche. I've been reading Linsey's books since Mask of Shadows, and I've never been disappointed. I thought I knew what this book was going to be about going into it, but I should have known better! That's the amazing thing about Linsey Miller's writing. It's never boring, predictable, or too safe. I always feel like anything could happen!

This book has a killer premise—literally. Thirteen honors students are given one final assignment: kill their professor by the end of the school year. If they succeed, their student debt is wiped clean. If they fail, they die and get erased from history. It’s intense, and that tension carries through the whole book.

The story follows Fabian, Mia, and Credence, three students who team up to try and survive. Their friendship is one of the strongest parts of the book, and even though the stakes are high, there are some nice moments between them that give the story heart.

What really stands out is how the book tackles big themes like power, ambition, and the cost of education. It’s a dark academia story that actually critiques academia instead of just leaning into the aesthetic. There’s political drama, grief, violence, and a magic system that’s based on science and logic, but sometimes the explanations are a little hard to follow. It’s one of those stories where you might need to slow down to fully get what’s going on.

The pacing is a bit uneven. It starts strong, slows down in the middle, then picks up again toward the end, but the ending doesn’t hit as hard as it could’ve. And while the world is creative, there are parts—especially with the magic—that feel confusing or underdeveloped.

Still, it’s smart, different, and isn’t afraid to go dark. You probably won’t connect with every character, and you definitely shouldn’t get too attached. But if you’re into stories that blend fantasy, mystery, and real-world commentary, this one’s worth checking out. Just be ready for a bit of a mental workout.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Whew, this was a stressful read, bringing back terrible memories of my time in academia and full of cutting criticism of the entire system. Each POV change was gripping, with each one better than the last, but the end of the first section was particularly shocking to me. I do have to say I feel like at times I wasn't smart enough to understand what the characters were talking about and I didn't feel like I had a very good grasp on how severance works, but the character arcs dynamics carried me through. I think reading the end of the book perfectly captured the feeling of looking back at the beginning of the school year and realizing how irreversibly you had changed with the way the characters had been pushed to their limits and beyond. Brutal and bloody, I'm looking forward to the author's next works.

thank you to netgalley and harpercollins for providing me a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review...

full disclosure i dnf'ed at 33% but i will try to review to the best of my ability

this book tries to be too many things at once. first it came across as an extremely interesting premise "students of an elite magical school need to pass a final class in order to be considered an 'honorable magician': kill their final professor. oh yeah and that professor is actually a devil that was resurrected just for this job. if they don't kill the professor by the end of term, they are killed."

wow. that sounds incredible??? except it's not.

i personally loved how the book was written in terms of lyrical stylistic-ness. it uses parentheses a lot (you know, to let the reader know more information). however, what really fell flat was that there was this huge world that they just... kept adding to. first we only care about the class but then it just seemed like there were so many strings added to the equation. now there's a graveyard where we're going to meet an important character that invites us to a ball?? what is going on??

i was very confused for the entire time i read this and maybe it's because im small brained or whatever, but like, make it make sense.

this review doesn't even make sense to me anymore tbh. i highlighted sooooo many lines that were beautiful and wonderful and i loved the writing but it made me feel stupid because nothing actually made sense!! make it make sense!!

dnf at 33%. i would recommend you give it a try though.

This book is packed with tension and unexpected turns that kept me invested. I loved the setting and the unexpected twists

Thirteen students. One devilish professor. They have until the end of the year to find out how to kill him—but if they make a mistake, it's their blood on his hands. They've spent their lives and an outrageous amount of money studying to become magicians, but as long as the Professor lives, they're as good as dead.

When I finished this book, I had to just close my eyes for a few minutes and think and really sit with it. This book, to me, is an ode to overachievers (especially queer and neurodivergent ones) who fought so hard for their place in school and in life, but constantly feel like they're slipping behind or not doing enough despite giving it 110%. This book looks at me as someone who was a neurodivergent kid, in advanced programs, but somehow not "right" enough, and tells me that I'm seen, and that I did my best. It isn't always us who fail. Sometimes it's set up to fuck us over. A book for the ones who it seems everyone else can break rules and get away with it, but if we breathe wrong, someone's getting on to us. It's hard for this review not to be very personal for me because, to me, this book was very personal. I saw myself in each and every single one of these characters and every page was a magnificent blow to the heart.

Miller's writing style really succeeded in allowing me to pace myself in time with the characters and what was happening in the story. It was easy to understand, yet the time I spent on each page was significantly higher compared to other books of the same size. It really sat in my brain and the entire week I was reading this book, it was constantly rotating in the back of my mind as I tried to figure out what method, what loophole, what plan these kids were going to use to meet their goal.

I really enjoyed the world building in this novel as well. It came to life, and relies on a very unique magic system called severance, in which the user separates their soul from their body to manipulate reality. I was VERY intrigued with how devils and angels were set up in the lore, and I am dying to know more about the angels in this universe particularly.

This book was a *chef's kiss* for me. If you like dark academia, magical universities, (kinda hot in my opinion) demon professors, queer kids in conundrums, and crying your eyes out, get That Devil Ambition when it comes out on June 3rd, or check out Miller's socials to see how you can preorder and get some bonus goodies.

Thank you to Net Galley for the eARC.

Short and Sweet Review

Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia, are students at one of the best schools for magicians and they’re in the honors class. Every year the school brings in a devil to teach the honors class and the students have the goal to kill the devil by the end of the year or he gets to kill them all.

That Devil, Ambition is a very unique book and I don’t think I’ve read a book like this before. We have Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia who are all in the honors class and they’re best friends, so obviously the three of them want to make it out alive together. We get all three characters POVs and it’s interesting to see how all of them approached the process of having to kill their professor. I will say that the professor or devil is very nonchalant and is confident in knowing that offing him will be a hard if not impossible task. The Honors class consists of 13 students and each of them can try to kill the professor but if they fail he’ll kill them. Some of them attempt to do it and then die on the spot, others try waiting towards the end of the school year to execute their plan. Fabian is a top student and he’s smart and he’s put a lot on the line to even attend the school. He makes a deal with the professor and we see a lot of students make deals and it was interesting to see what kind of deals were being made. Credence is our math wiz and she comes into play with her ability to make sure calculations are correct and we see more of this when she comes up with a plan. Euphemia was the last character whose POV we got to read from and most characters viewed her as someone who wasn’t all there but in actuality she’s very aware. I was excited to read from Euphemia’s POV because we got to see whether or not the students would end up succeeding or dying. There were a few twists at the beginning of the book that I was not expecting and then the end of the book the revelation was as equally surprising.

Overall, this was a unique book and the dark academia was really well done. I will say the pacing was kind of slow but watching these students come up with plans and trying to execute them is what will really keep readers engaged. It’s worth saying that we shouldn’t get attached to any of the characters in this book. This was such a different read that I would recommend it to others, for the plot and the characters.

4.75 stars rounded up


I had no idea that I was going to love this book as much as I did!

That Devil, Ambition is a multi-pov, ya dark academia fantasy following students in the honor’s class of a magical school. Graduating from the honor’s class will waive their loans- but graduating requires killing their demon professor.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this premise, but it wasn’t this- in the best way!

The book is split into three, with each section centering one of the main characters.

The characters were all so complex and messy and terrible but I still loved them. Their relationships were equally complex and messy and terrible, and I found the friendships incredibly engaging but loved the little moments of the romantic relationships as well. While not central to the narrative for the most part, each character’s romantic relationship were beautiful and heartbreaking and I loved the snippets we were shown of them.

And I am, always, myself so of course I loved the professor.

In a way, I was almost surprised by the importance of politics and world building at large as it was subtly introduced and slowly became more and more relevant. The criticism of academia, student loans, and the slowness of change stayed so central to the narrative in a way that feels so important in ya books right now. I wish I could have read this book in middle or high school.

Thank you NetGalley and Storytide for the ARC- all thoughts my own!!!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!

The writing style for this was really tricky for me to hold on to. I felt like it needed a slower introduction to the magic system, and less characters, I really wanted to just sink into the story of it, but I was struggling with the shifting perspectives and the science mixed with magic mixed with prose. I think I'll probably try again with audio, but it just didn't work as well as I wanted it to.

I could not connect with this and I don’t know why. This has everything I love when it comes to dark academia books and I really appreciated the humor in having a devil as a professor. This has all the elements of what I wanted it to be and yet the prose left something to be desired. I don’t know if it was the constant change in characters or the plot that stayed stagnant after the beginning, but I ended up DNF’ing at around 100 pages. I feel like this is probably a problem with me not the book because it is such a cool premise with great representation but I couldn’t stick it out to see what happens next.

Totally brilliant. Dark academia at its dark academia-est, which is particularly refreshing to see when (no shade) many publishers seem to think that label just means "boarding school angst" these days. The "how will they kill the Professor?" mystery kept me turning the pages as I fell in love with the characters, the creative magic system, and the writing itself. I haven't really read anything like this, so I'm unfortunately not going to be able to give good comps, but I would recommend this to anyone who's in the mood for a good, smart (very annotatable!) book that hooks you with its claws and won't let you go. It'll deeply resonate if you've ever felt ambition, ever been a victim of an institution, or been a helpless teenager trying to fight injustice with the best weapon that you'll ever have: your mind.

DNF at 41%. I like the ideas here, but not the execution. None of the characters were particularly compelling, and the world building was incredibly vague.

this would probably be a 3.5 at best.

if you're a fan of WHAT WE DEVOUR, you'll know that the writing style is a bit tough to get into. this is a type of book you need to keep your eyes on with no background noise (very hard for me). cut into parts, each focuses on a character that you'll be able to learn, admire, or even love with all your heart. starting with fabian, i have to say, it took a lot longer for me to warm up with. i absolutely love irene, credence, and mia, but fabian was slow going and magician scholars wanting to go full ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM on their professor is right up my alley. this one fell a little short on delivery, but i was constantly turning pages in hopes of finding out MORE.

miller delivers with a powerful message on the education system. your life is nothing but a few thousand sil, debt that can be paid off if you can kill your professor and earn your worth. as a former student who now sloughs through debt, this hit close to home. grief accompanies it, and with an author's note that killer, my heart and soul was invested into THAT DEVIL, AMBITION. even though it wasn't my favorite thing, it was something that i thought about well after the last page.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

That Devil, Ambition by Linsey Miller is a third person multi-POV YA dark academia. Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia are honors students at the best school for magicians. But in order to graduate, they need to kill their professor, a devil summoned specifically to kill or be killed. And if the students fail to kill the Professor by the end of the year, they will die.

There are some romantic relationships, but I wouldn’t necessarily call them romance arcs. Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia interests do not get a ton of page time as interests and there’s a much bigger focus on trying to survive that there isn’t a ton of room to develop a romance. I wouldn’t say any of them feel like they would end in an HEA and even the characters are assuming that isn’t going to happen. I still enjoyed reading them because they are very different from what I’m used to because I’m still somewhat new to horror and dark academia and there was some interesting stuff that happens within those relationships.

Of the three POVs, Euphemia’s might have been my favorite. It is the last POV we get so we see from her POV whether or not the class succeeds, but we also get a very different view of everyone than we did in Fabian and Credence’s POVs. Euphemia is a lot more aware than she lets on and she’s very good at reading people. She knows things that Fabian wasn’t saying just by what he did and didn’t tell her.

In terms of genre, this is kind of a suspense dark academia with elements of horror or dark fantasy. I don’t quite know exactly where the line is between horror and dark fantasy, but I know devils can appear in both and the atmosphere is something that I have seen in both horror and dark academia. The pacing wasn’t quick enough for me to see it as a thriller, so I think ‘suspense’ works much better and it is very suspenseful as we build up to the climax.

Content warning for gore

I would recommend this to fans of dark academia, horror, and dark fantasy and readers of YA looking for a creepy, suspenseful read

A solid title from Linsey Miller. I really enjoyed the world and it's message and critique on the futility of academia. I truly connected with each character and saw bits of myself in each of them. I think anyone who has ever lost themselves in their grades and their work will find that Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia feel all too familiar.

I like anything academia, and if you add magical elements to it, I am in! Liked it! Thought it was a fun read

This was a wonderfully written book. The way the author used the shifts in perspective as well as the pacing of the story to raise the stakes throughout the book was so well done. The writing style really builds the pressure the students themselves are facing until the book is impossible to put down. The world building was great and I enjoyed how the magic system was explained through the students lessons and plots. It was an interesting way to learn the exposition needed to understand what is going on while also leaving enough space for the reader to wonder along side the characters what exactly are the limits of this magic system? The way the politics of this world are wound through the book is also interesting and explains the students desperation to join the program as well as help build the tension of what all is riding on the classes pass or fail. The premise of why these students are so willing to risk their lives is so well done and was one of the most attention grabbing aspects of the story for me personally. All around this was such a well written, twisty, and captivating story; that I am sure I will be thinking about for a while.

That Devil, Ambition is the latest dark YA Fantasy novel by author Linsey Miller, author of the Mask of Shadows duology, as well as the stand alone novels Belle Revolte and What We Devour (to name just her YA Fantasy work). The novel is based upon an idea that I feel is becoming rather common/overplayed of late: teens going to a school - usually of magic - that is deadly to its students, whether that be through the acts of the teachers, the students themselves, or the school building and spirits hanging around there (see Naomi Novik's Scholomance among others). Miller's work is generally extremely dark and uses her dark fantasy settings to play with some really interesting themes, so I was very curious to see her take on this setting.

And That Devil, Ambition pays off by really interrogating the reasoning and concepts behind this setting, all through a plot that follows 3 students involved in the deadly honors class: Fabian - an ambitious former noble looking to redeem his family line, Credence - a math genius from a foreign country who is relying upon her to succeed, and Euphemia (Mia) - a seemingly aloof an absent minded genius who struggles with other people. As part of the Honors Class, they will only graduate if they manage to kill their professor, an immensely powerful summoned Devil - but they will be killed if they fail in an attempt or if they fail to kill him by the end of the year. The three of them, and their classmates, are all forced into this honors class by oppressive student debt and impossible circumstances, and the story uses this setup to tell a strong tale about power, corrupt institutions perpetrating that power and trying to maintain it over others, debt (student debt especially) and the way it crushes those who have it, and more. It's some really good stuff and I highly recommend this book as usual for Miller.

More after the Jump:

Plot Summary:
The Stellarium of Cifra is the only school on the continent that trains magicians, particularly in the art of Severance - separating one's soul from their body - the dangerous art that is the basis of all magic. Naturally the school's tuition is a small fortune (and it's even more for the limited number of foreign students from other nations who are allowed to attend), such that most can only afford it by taking out painful student loans. But becoming a graduate of the Stellarium opens all of the possibilities of the world such that many take on those loans in hopes of accomplishing that feat...and for those who dare, there exists a path towards forgiveness of those loans: the Honors class. Students who make it into the Honors class and pass have their entire tuition reimbursed. There's just one problem: the Honors class is taught by a summoned Devil and to pass the class, the students have to find a way to kill that devil...or be killed in turn at the end of the year.

Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia (Mia) are three of the thirteen students in the Honors class this year, all needing desperately to pass. For Fabian, the top student in their class, that's to pay off his student loans and to re-establish his noble family's line after falling into disgrace. For Credence, the brilliant yet often hesitant math genius, it's to become the magician her nation of Arinsal needs...as they may not get another entrant into the school for a few years. And for Euphemia, it's to prove herself and maybe to tear it all down. The three are inseparable - Fabian seemingly the leader helping awkward antisocial Euphemia manage her life and Credence her hesitation - but their own wants and secrets will come storming out as the year goes on, as attempt after attempt on the Devil's life fails to kill him and their time to kill him comes closer and closer to the end.

That Devil, Ambition is told in three parts chronologically, with each part coming from the perspective of a different one of the three protagonists - first Fabian, then Credence, and finally Euphemia. This lends a bit of mystery to the novel as each of the three protagonists is very different, and each of them sees the world very differently. It also allows for recontextualization as we jump eyes in each act and realize things look different from another view.

For Fabian, he sees the world as one he deserved more from as he comes from a noble family that fell out of money and honor (and his parents were and are....not good), something that he aims to change: after all, if he passes the honor's class, his debts will be repaid and he will have proven his Galloway name worthy of its past prestige. To do that, he affects a visage as the teacher's pet, all the while he tries to scheme and plot his way to success...and anyone he doesn't care about is simply a tool to be used. He does genuinely care about Mia as his closest companion from home and Credence, who he befriended at first due to her math skills and since now only wants the best for her...but others can be discarded, even if those others are liked by his two friends. He also has the absolute belief that his class ranking of number 1 represents how great he truly is. And yet this atmosphere also makes Fabian internally lonely, especially as his two friends seem to find others for romantic attachments...while the person he's interested in is Irene, a snobbish noble top ranker who he absolutely cannot trust.

By contrast, Credence is the closest thing of any of the three to being "morally good", as she genuinely wants to do right with her magical skills - all being underlined by her great work in math. She has a crush on Henry (and it's mutual) and can't resist connecting with him even though it might limit her options in the Honors class and relies upon Fabian to stop hesitating over whether her choices might be right or wrong - especially when she feels the pressure of her whole nation relying upon her. And so when she has to act on her own, she falls into disarray, struggling with what the Honors class and its kill or be killed mantra tries to crush into her.

And then there's Euphemia, who is asexual (but not aromantic) and seemingly on the spectrum, not really the best at communicating with anyone who isn't Fabian. Her secret - which I won't go into too much here for spoiling - is that she is far smarter and takes far more care in her own external disarray than anyone notices, and is more aware of what is really going on in the world than her two compatriots...an awareness that leads her to be willing to do some truly monstrous actions to keep herself and her friends alive.

The three characters and their differing views and personalities shine as they deal with the Devil Professor and their fellow students as days go by and their time to kill the professor gets shorter and shorter. And this allows the book to really demonstrate the real question every book like this should ask: Why would anyone create a magic school that kills its students like this? And this book answers the question: for the same reason an elite school would require crippling student loans (like this one does), to limit the school to the elite and make the less elite students have to jump through extra hoops just to reap any of the same benefits...all the while acting like the school is still also giving opportunities to those less fortunate students. The nation of Cifra uses the school and the honors class to hoard magical talent and prevent other nations from obtaining same...and to keep its own poorer students down, as they need to go through the honors class just to have a chance and most likely they'll die in the process. And of course, for the students to survive, they'll often have to corrupt themselves in the process, making them just as despicable as the system that they were forced into. All of this makes clear sense through our trio's eyes, and it comes to a head in the conclusion, where one of the main trio decides to take on the system itself, only to find out how difficult and horrible her actions would have to be to try to make a difference, even if it's at all possible. Mind you, the story does end with a glimmer of hope, but it's dark and it's powerful.

There's a lot more I could go into here as That Devil, Ambition is truly a compelling read (I basically haven't even gone into the professor Devil at all), such that even the usual Miller flaws I complain about weren't even that bad this time (as usual, some of the secondary characters I had trouble telling apart, but it wasn't nearly as bad as in the other books of hers I've read). Really the flaws don't matter here - this is an excellent thought provoking and compelling dark fantasy and I highly recommend it.