A Lesson in Vengeance

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Boring. Boring. Boring. Felt like a Sapphic and dark "Harry Potter" retelling. But a disappointing one. The writing made it harder for me to read. Absolutely nothing was happening, the writing was poor, the characters were weird....can't deal with all these. Essentially, Felicity and Ellis team up (and hook up) to discover the truth behind the old-timey murders that I mentioned above. PLEASE do not make my mistake and get excited about this. You get approximately 10% of the information you want, which is just enough to make you think that that sounds like a better idea for a book. Ironically, both Merlin and Morgana used their aging spells to disguise themselves as Dragoon and Hilda. 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. Oh, but can you blame them? You area witch. I don’t doubt you would have poisoned the village crops, salted their fields, and led their daughters into temptation.”

Dark Academia (obviously!), Unresolved Sexual Tension, Catskill Mountains, Mental Health Issues, Dubiously Accurate Witchcraft, Ellis Haley Logic, Slow Burn, Bad Relationship Exemplars, Poetry Lesbians, Ill-Advised Decisions Involving Ouija Boards and Skulls, Ghosts, Let’s Pathologize Female Anger Ellis, a hotshot novelist, transfers to Dalloway to work on a new book about the Dalloway Five. In the 18th century, five Dalloway girls died in terrible circumstances, and many believe they were murdered for being witches. Ellis embeds herself in the legends, and that includes Felicity, who spent months researching the women and the accusations of witchcraft. Felicity is drawn to Ellis, and Ellis in turn tries to help her new friend confront her trauma instead of burying it. The closer the two girls get and the more intimate their relationship becomes, the more Felicity begins to believe she’s being tormented by Alex’s malevolent spirit. Bumps in the night, figures cloaked in shadows, impossible notes left in books…is Felicity being haunted by a ghost or her own guilt? Or is something—or someone—else to blame? 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. A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee is a haunting and deeply layered sapphic dark academia and gothic thriller that kept a firm grip on my mind long after I had finished reading the novel.

Creating magic and illusion for a rollercoaster script

Sometimes I think that even within the kindest of us, there sleeps a secret monster that could be unleashed. It just takes more or less intense circumstances for the monster to awaken. That’s something Ellis talks about in A Lesson in Vengeance, as well—the question of whether a quiet, banal evil exists in all of us, and we just have to hope we never find out what it would take to bring our evil to the fore. Dalloway School is a very isolated school, and the house that Felicity is going to be sharing with four other girls is even more isolated from the rest of the campus. And even though there are beliefs of witchcraft all over the school, the Godwin House is where five young suspected witches lived before they were murdered 300 years ago.

I hang my dresses in the closet, arranged by color and fabric— gauzy white cotton, cool-­water cream silk—and pretend not to remember the spot where I’d pried the baseboard loose from the wall last year and concealed my version of contraband: tarot cards, long taper candles, herbs hidden in empty mint tins. I used to arrange them atop my dresser in a neat row the way another girl might arrange her makeup. I was definitely a bit hesitant going into this, no matter how pumped I was over the concept, because I had a rough go with Lee's debut series. This? I loved the writing, I loved the dip in and out of spooky paranormal horror, the uncertainty of it all. I started this late at night and I won't say it scared me but oh did it do a good job with the eerie vibes. 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?” Not to mention that the few characters we had were one dimensional and they were almost the same. They were needed for the plot, but didn't have enough personality. Not like the mcs were so much better, but at least I had some idea about who they are. I can barely stand to exist in this place anymore. Dalloway might be in my blood and bones, but as much as I was unable to stay away, Dalloway’s history—and mine—hangs over the campus like a heavy fog. I wonder if Ellis feels it. If Ellis is scared of it, or if she hopes a shadow of that evil will seep up from the ground and infect her, the way it infected Margery Lemont.Who would've thought that a YA dark academia about pretentious rich white girls that drink, smoke and pretend to be in a gothic novel would be so tedious to get through? 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. Let's start with the fact that at the end it was a totally different book than what it was at the beginning. At first it was this spooky, paranormal-like dark academia, and it turned into a not well executed mystery/thriller.