A Lesson in Vengeance prides itself on being a dark academia novel, from the language used and the scenery — an all girls boarding school, tweed jackets, novelists, and secret lesbian romances. It hits the aesthetics of it hard and wonderfully at that, but misses the whole appeal of dark academia novels flat. That is, to say, the depth. 

This book feels rushed, beautiful as it is, the plot is a mess. There’s so many attempts at little twists and turns that are never set up. The themes fall flat. The witch plot line is never fully wrapped up. It’s just… lackluster. I’m rating this two stars not because it’s so terrible but worse, it could’ve been incredible. 

Dark academia is wrought with elitism and privilege. Barely is this seen in the novel besides a few mentions with one of the characters. It’s a bunch of rich girls playing up sorcery and magic for the sake of aesthetics and that’s… it. The protagonist mocks an occult of sorts that forms at the school, yet there’s no self awareness of how she’s doing the same thing. It’s mind numbing to see her preach about people only appropriating the aesthetics of a movement while the novel does the same thing. 

The ending was painful to read. Again, it felt rushed. The character arcs were left unfinished, it didn’t make much sense for the tone of the story, etc. The book kept pushing and pushing Felicity’s supposed delusions as well as Ellis’s eccentricities as this acting. To me, at least, it seemed it was leading up to some breaking point of them realizing they were, at the end of the day, just incredibly privileged teenage girls. They had the privilege to ‘play’ murder and slaughter while their classmates fought for their lives for the spots they had at the school. Or something of the sorts, just something, anything, more than the surface level. 

But nope. That’s it. That’s the book. Beautifully as its’ written, that’s the main appeal. The writing style itself is gorgeous as are some of the scenes.  

Ellis and Felcity’s romance was very enticing to watch. I must compliment how natural the progression of the relationship was. 

To throw in the murder plot ruined this. It just. It didn’t make sense to me whatsoever. Ellis did all of these violent things but at the end of the day, she was playing - acting. It was a cheap plot twist for shock value. 

I wish I could rate this higher, I wish so dearly that this could’ve been more than it is.  

Fun read but not much else, which is fine! It serves its purpose well and is a nice romcom of a book.