A Lesson in Vengeance

Product Information

Without giving away spoilers, is there a scene or character that you’re reallyexcited for readers to experience? Is this what it feels like to be a ghost? To haunt the same halls over and over, waiting for someone to see you, to speak to you, to call for you or send you away again?” I absolutely had issues putting this book down!! It was sooo addictive and I couldn’t wait to see what happened!! I usually don’t enjoy unreliable main characters, but I couldn’t help but like Felicity. She is just broken in a way that tugged at my heart strings and drew me in from the first couple of chapters. Hell, I was drawn in from the blurb on the book!! Then Ellis… oh our dear, dear Ellis…

This is a book that many people describe as many things. People call it fantasy, even though it doesn't really have any magic in it. People call it YA, even though there's mature content in it. People call it not YA, even though the characters are aggressively teenage and the whole thing has that adolescent je ne sais quoi. People call it a mystery, or a thriller, even though none of the mysteries are solved and no plot event contains even a modicum of the excitement that the word thriller should imply. It's Ellis Haley's first year at Dalloway, and she has already amassed a loyal following. A prodigy novelist at seventeen, Ellis is a so-called method writer. She's eccentric and brilliant, and Felicity can't shake the pull she feels to her. So when Ellis asks Felicity to help her research the Dalloway Five for her second book, Felicity can't say no. Given her history with the arcane, Felicity is the perfect resource. Most of my most anticipated books this year let me down. Idk if it's because I had too high expectations, or they are just not my taste AT ALL, but I am tired. The average person" would find that the material, on the whole, "appeals to prurient interest in sex" [15]Author Victoria Lee also sat down to talk with us about the novel, from its overlap with the Dark Academia genre to her joy in writing female villains. There is also a major theme and plot of literature and how these five girls are working on different theses. Felicity's thesis is about misogyny and the portrayal of women in horror literature. Where a new girl named Ellis is working on an entire book, trying to research these murders to help be inspired for her next award winning novel. And because their projects kind of go together (and because they are living in a really creepy house that five women lived before they were murdered) they decide to work together, and Ellis very much wants to prove to Felicity that magic is not real once and for all. Witchcraft is woven into Dalloway’s past. The school doesn’t talk about it, but the students do. In secret rooms and shadowy corners, girls convene. And before her girlfriend died, Felicity was drawn to the dark. She’s determined to leave that behind now, but it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget. My only issue? I would've loved for it to be twice as long, just so I could sink deeper and deeper into this enthralling novel. Lee's prose here is so sophisticated and delicious to read. (Also, another sex scene beside the one already included, which I imagine will surprise some people - my excuse for wanting more is that these scenes highlight the complexity of Felicity & Ellis' crooked dynamic excellently.) Seeing Felicity struggle with this made me tear up more than once. It meant so much to me because I've never had representation for this that made me feel quite so... seen. In my opinion, Victoria Lee wrote psychotic depression so close to how I felt that I don't even know where to begin. I just feel so thankful for them writing this.

As I mentioned, I previously reviewed this book before it was published. My review wasn’t exactly kind, I tend to be extremely frank and I won’t apologize for this or attempt to police my tone. listen. all i want is a f/f book where they aren't absolutely cruel and toxic towards each other, i don't think that's too much to ask. okay, that's a lie – i also want a dark academia book that doesn't take advantage of mental illness and doesn't twist it in the darkest of ways without then focusing or at least talking about the healing journey. i feel like we were supposed to feel bad for felicity when she realised what was actually happening, but all i could think was duh, finally.Before her girlfriend’s tragic death, Felicity Morrow was drawn to the dark. But after a year away from Dalloway’s ivy-covered campus, she’s determined to leave all that behind her, focus on her senior thesis, and graduate. Only it’s hard when Dalloway’s occult history is everywhere. And when the new girl won’t let her forget.

this book is a lot of firsts for me. for one, it's my first book with a canonically nonbinary/trans character. as a trans author myself, this feels so validating, to be able to write a character like myself into a mainstream piece of fiction. it's also my first book with a big five publisher, that will be carried in bookstores. and i can't wait to share felicity and ellis' world with you all. A Lesson in Vengeance is the only book I've read for a while that fully embodies the fundamentals of what makes dark academia dark academia. There's the underlying sense of obsession around people and ideologies, for instance, so clear within ALIV (often missing in other novels called dark academia), and the subliminal homoerotic content evident within dark academia 'staple' novels (i.e. The Secret History, progenitor of it all) is brought to the forefront here and highlighted in the form of a sapphic relationship and two lesbian main characters. And do not get me started on the unreliable narrator - which though isn't a factor exclusive to dark academia, it adds another level of complexity to the fact that you're not supposed to really trust dark academia protagonists.A frequent theme in dark academic literature is that of the thin line between obsession and madness. I just completed my Ph.D., so I can tell you firsthand that mental illness is disproportionately high among academics. When you’re at that level of education, there’s a lot of pressure to succeed, and your success can feel like it’s directly proportional to how much time and happiness you sacrifice to your research. Research, by the way, that’s usually about the tiniest sliver of a sliver of a subject—and that’s the topic that becomes your entire world. So the fact that dark academic media seems so concerned with the overlap between intellectual obsessions and mental illness rings true for me. I wanted to explore that in A Lesson in Vengeance. When is obsession just obsession, and when do we take obsession too far? When do we ignore mental health problems because we perceive them to be part and parcel of academic pursuit—the price you pay for passion? Once upon a time I found it so easy to forget the stories about Godwin House and the five Dalloway witches who lived here three hundred years ago, their blood in our dirt, their bones banging from our trees."