There are books you admire—and then there are books that devour you whole.

Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe is feral, blood-soaked, and utterly intoxicating—dark academia at its most vicious and most seductive.

From the moment you step onto the campus of Preston University, you can feel it—that wrongness humming just beneath the surface. Grothe doesn’t just build atmosphere; they weaponize it. Ivy-covered walls become suffocating. Lecture halls feel like hunting grounds. And beneath it all, something ancient and hungry waits with terrifying patience.

At the heart of this story are Marcella and Lacie—two assistant professors clawing for tenure, circling each other like predators. Marcella, a draugr with a quiet, rotting power, and Lacie, sharp-tongued, brilliant, and gloriously defiant, are electric together. Their dynamic is combustible, grumpy x bratty in the most feral sense, and every interaction feels like a collision between desire and destruction. This is enemies-to-lovers sharpened into a blade.

And the horror? Unrelenting.

Grothe understands that true horror isn’t just blood—it’s hunger. It’s obsession. It’s the slow realization that the monster might not be beneath the university… it might be standing beside you. Or worse—it might be you. The murders are visceral, yes, but it’s the dread that lingers. The rot. The inevitability.

What makes Lethal Kiss extraordinary is how seamlessly it binds that horror to something deeply, achingly romantic. This is a story about monstrous love—about being seen in your most ruinous, unpalatable form and being wanted anyway. About feminine rage that refuses to be softened. About ambition that bites back.

And Grothe delivers this with prose that is as lyrical as it is lethal.

Fans of Jennifer’s Body and Ninth House will absolutely fall under its spell—but Lethal Kiss stands entirely on its own: sharper, hungrier, and more unapologetically vicious.

While this marks Grothe’s adult debut, readers of their YA horror novel Hollow will recognize the signature: an author who understands that horror and longing are two sides of the same blade. Here, though, they let it run wild—and the result is breathtaking.

As an author, I am genuinely in awe. The confidence. The control. The sheer audacity of this story.

Lethal Kiss doesn’t ask for your attention—it takes it, drags you into the dark, and dares you to love what you find there.

And the most dangerous part?

You will.

I never use this account to review books on Netgalley, but I'm quite proud of my Goodreads review for it, so you will see it again:

Marcella has a prehensile tongue, and for that I rate this book five stars.

Stunningly queer and delightfully campy, Lethal Kiss is the adult debut of an author I already loved, so forgive my bias, but the humor, heart, and higher education baked into the plot takes this story to an entirely new level. The main characters, Marcella and Lacie, weren't meant to work together, to be together, and yet forces outside of their control bind them to one another as they root out the heart of a mystery that poses a danger to both their ways of life.

Marcella is elegantly genderqueer, perpetually in control—and when she isn't it's both horrifying and majestic to behold. Lacie is initially a trembling lesbian who thoroughly proves that she is not fragile like a flower but instead fragile like a bomb—and when she finally goes off, there is not a man on that campus that can stand up to her. The minor characters that populate this world bring their own life and light, but the focus remains on our two leads whose distinct voices, mindsets, and slowburn approach to their attraction to one another kept me turning pages.

If Jennifer's Body, The Covenant, and Ready or Not were a book, it would be Lethal Kiss. I can't recommend this one highly enough!