Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson

16 reviews

adancewithbooks's review against another edition

slow-paced

2.75

Thank you to Orbit and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

An Education in Malice has a promising setting and plot but lacks in the actual execution.

The idea of a dark academia set in an all girls school in the 1960's was a really interesting idea. There were a lot of great ways that could have gone. Unfortunately the author didn't take it that way.

I think where this book lacked were the characters and the overal vibe. The writing itself was decent enough but it never carried over any atmosphere. It stopped be from being drawn in to the story. The addition of the vampires was very underwhelming. The threat of a vampire felt like absolutely nothing throughout.

It didn't help that I didn't care about our characters which is not helpful in a character driven story. There was a little bit of our characters here and there but I didn't feel like I was getting to know anything about them before they came to the school. I felt like I was missing a whole chunk of them. Their before lives didn't go away the moment they entered the school. The worst was that this was even thrown into one of the characters faces when barely any of that pre-history was shared with us.

Their whole rivalry and romance was an obsession, and the author seemed to forget that maybe there was more at the school than just a writing class. I get that the obsession was the whole point but it could have been a more well rounded story.

It was a decent read but not memorable in anyway.

Content Warnings

torrentsofhayl's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

rookeatsbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

For some godforsaken reason, I finished this book in one day. In the little praise I'll offer for this book, I guess it means I was intrigued enough by the plot to keep reading. BUT, and this is a big but, the writing is quite poor. I googled the author mid-read, thinking that this book must have been written by a teenager with a dark academia tumblr obsession. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

My biggest problem with this book is Gibson's tendency to tell and not show. The first 20-30% of the book is infodump exposition about "This is how Laura feels about this. This is how Carmilla feels about this. And they're both sooooooo mad at each other and have such a tense rivalry (You believe me, right?)" Also, a nitpick but Gibson's tendency to start multiple chapters with "Month verbed XYZ'" made me want to bash my head against a wall. Find a better way to make time transitions!

The telling instead of showing was especially notable when considering that a huge theme in the story is love and obsession and the ways that they cross over onto each other and can make people do crazy things. This is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that none of the writing makes you feel like any of these people are genuinely obsessed with one another. I didn't feel any chemistry or magnetism between the characters and considering that one of the main conceits of the plot is Laura and Carmilla's academic rivalry and competition for De Lafontaine's attention, you would think that DLF would actually be an interesting character. Wrong! In addition, I lost my mind over the sheer amount of times you read "Laura hates Carmilla. Carmilla hates Laura. But Laura's obsessed with Carmilla. And Carmilla's obsessed with Laura" in so many words. Again, show don't tell.

The prose was also bland. All of the reviews claiming that it's lush and beautiful and whatever........ have you read good prose? There was a lot of "devouring" and "feverishly" and things of the sort and it comes off both incredibly pretentious and also like Gibson didn't want to put the effort into describing things in an interesting way. There are many sections where she just spells out exactly what she wants you to deduce thematically from a situation and so many overwrought metaphors that I wanted to vomit.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a passage that made me audibly say "barf" out loud because of the cliche, overplayed, and just dumb and cringey figurative language:
(Not major spoilers since this is tagged as a romance, but spoilered just in case)

She kissed me with a martyr's agonized desperation, like I was the only sword she ever wanted to fall on. I kissed her right back like the cutting edge of a blade, trying to inflict as much damage as possible.

Honorable mentions:

Bound by blood and secrecy, with no recourse to anyone but each other. It would almost be romantic, under more advantageous circumstances.

"I'll go first, Carmilla said, draping herself elegantly across the couch. Everything she did was elegant.

I've always had the strangest instinct to run towards whatever is hurting me, to bare my neck to any predator that caught my scent

Love is sacrifice, Professor. Whether it's you on the butcher's table or not, someone always bleeds.

Also, completely separate conversation that I do not have the brainspace to go over in this review, but you would think that someone who writes queer romance would possibly realize that framing lesbians (or sapphic women in general) as predatory monsters who prey on younger women *cough cough, De Lafontaine* is problematic??? Like did the author think about the implications of that for more than 10 microseconds.

In conclusion, I don't know what possessed me to read this trainwreck of a book but I would not reread. I was so hyped by the premise and was severely disappointed by the execution. Rather than a thoughtful reimagining of Carmilla in an invigorating setting, it came off as a wannabe The Secret History with half the wit or writing skill.

Content Warnings

torismazarine's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

ohennui's review against another edition

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dark mysterious

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Content Warnings

toofondofbooks_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Instead of devouring this book in one sitting the way I desperately wanted to, I forced myself to take my time while I immersed myself in Saint's gorgeous prose, deep compelling characters, and the stunning dark academia setting. I loved everything about this book and annotated it like crazy. There is just so much to enjoy here and I'm truly not going to shut up until all my friends read this. If you loved Dowry, you'll love this. Just trust me.

Content Warnings

blacksphinx's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Dark Academia started its life as collages of stolen photos posted on Pinterest and tumblr. Gothic churches, colleges in autumn, people in flowing blouses. When I started reading for pleasure again in 2022, I was shocked to discover this was now a literary genre. How do you take collections of pretty photos and turn them into themes and plots?

Well... this book includes an interview with the author. In it, she says her stories start as a music video in her mind with vibes-based images and that's exactly how this novel turned out. It's vibes. It is a collection of scenes that if it was a movie or a music video, would be turned into gifs and reblogged on tumblr until the end of days. There's a massive college party where all four floors of the dorms are transformed into a representation of The Divine Comedy. During the opening ceremony, senior girls in pure white dresses put laurel crowns on the incoming freshmen around a bonfire. Does this have anything to do with the themes of the story? Nope! But they are cool to think about!

Things only happen to push us from one pretty set piece to another. And there's very, very few things that happen in this novel. It honestly bothers me that both protagonists are poets and spend all of their time off-screen writing poetry, but we only get two poems from them in the entire book. The author is a poet... where are the poems? This novel also doesn't need two PoVs, and I sometimes got them confused because they were so similar. (I feel bad that the author admits she struggled to make their voices sound different; I don't think she succeeded.) I also think it's weird that the protagonist being plus size is a selling point but no one mentions this until like 45% through the book?

But the thing is like, I was one of those girls reblogging collections of stolen photos a decade ago. The vibes are immaculate! I would reblog the gifs of the movie of this novel! But it's like, eating a giant puff of black cotton candy from a cone with bookshelves printed on it. There is no substance here. The words are beautiful, but so little happens. I am completely torn on what number to give to this book. It was pretty. It bored me. I'd read her other novels. I'm glad I checked this out of the library instead of preordering it.

Content Warnings

kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I enjoyed this SO MUCH. I’m not usually an enemies to lovers fan, but it was so well-executed here that I ate it up. Good book scramble brain so let me break my likes and (few) dislikes down in bullets:

Likes:

-the writing is so… crisp but sexy. it’s nearly as poetic as both characters, and I felt along with them. A treat for the eyes/brain

-laura is interesting and strange, but not in a Not Like Other Girls Protagonist way. she likes reading bdsm poetry and also wants to be a priest, she likes bad bitches but also wants to dominate them (!!!!), and she’s frank about what she wants and feels when she reaches the limits of her “southern manners”. She felt real. Not exaggeratedly shy or brash for plot, just a girl doing her best and feeling with her whole heart

-Elenore - books can often go in a tokeny black best friend direction, but this one managed to represent Elenore as a true, dedicated friend that supported Laura realistically without leaning into babysitting or mammying her. Elenore was my favorite char after laura tbh, she’s just that magnetic and kind.

-BIG one: Realistic depiction of how an older person can sway and stunt the growth of younger people in a relationship, regardless of them being “of age” or free to make their own decisions. Carmilla, and even Laura to an extent are frozen in time by De Lafontaine’s smothering; even Laura who is more able to see De Lafontaines manipulations for what they are is still swayed by her authority, her majesty, her power over them as someone with more life experience. The trajectory of her life is changed due to De Lafontaines need to collect girls; her grades slip, her friends miss her, and she feels disconnected from the world around her. Carmilla has few friends, and misses out on so many foundational college experiences because of how consumed she is by her professor. This book was a very true to life depiction of why “they’re both adults” means very little when dealing with power imbalances in a relationship. De Lafountaine was literally and figuratively sucking the youth out of these girls to sooth her own stolen years, by blood/vampirism and by time missed being 20-somethings discovering themselves in college. The only thing that put a stop to the toxic codependence was De Lafontaine herself; even with full understanding of how poorly she treated them, the girls could not fully extricate themselves from wanting to be loved by her. sad, complicated, twisted, but so well-rendered. Carmilla isn’t magically un-hooked, and even Laura isn’t immune to De Lafontaine by the end; they both will need time to heal and process the ways De Lafontaine warped how they see love and interacting with other people. I don’t think this is a permanent hurt, but it is one that Laura and Carmilla will probably have to reckon with in her wake both together and separately. the author treated this topic with all the seriousness yet hopefulness it deserves; these aren’t broken girls forever damaged, they are hurt girls that were taken advantage of by someone who experienced that same hurt and allowed herself to perpetuate it. The author is frank about how toxic it is, but optimistic about Carmilla and Laura on the other side of it, as well as De Lafontaines own reckoning with her toxic past.

- on that note, De Lafontaines breakthrough was really interesting. I’d been mildly afraid of some snape-esque redemption murder-suicide with her day one, but I was pleasantly surprised that DLF actually went the distance of realizing that she was continuing the cycle of abuse and manipulation, actively trying to change, doing away with her abuser, and freeing Carmilla as much as she was able. The damage is still done, and she’s permanently changed Carmilla’s life, but at least taking herself out of the equation was a huge step from where she began the book (jealous, domineering, secretive, etc.) I am really intrigued by the author showing us this, and think it’s a much gritter, realer way of doing away with a villain - there’s no magic “I want to be good now” moment or victorious defeat; she just wakes the fuck up and tries to not traumatize any more 20-somethings. She can’t undo her wrongs, but she can choose to stop making them, which requires self-awareness and will power I didn’t expect from her. I started the book wanting her staked along with her freak ex, and ended the book wishing her somewhat well on her journey of growth as long as it was far away from young women. Go figure!

-academic rivals done RIGHT. I hate when rivals/enemies to lovers is either half-assed snipes then they randomly kiss or just straight up bullying and hate crimes from one half of the relationship and we’re supposed to think it’s sexy & root for them. I don’t think emotional and physical abuse before you even start dating is cute AT ALL. So this book was a REVELATION compared to ETL like that. These girls are at each others throats academically, but look out for each other, at first bc of girl code/politeness, but increasingly out of fondness. They do a tasty two steps forward one step back with vulnerability and admitting their feelings, and their jockeying for DLF’s approval (toxic older woman aside) was incredible. When they finally touch it’s actually “sizzling” (I usually hate that word in book reviews, but it really fits!) because they really built up the dislike and indifference act, all to be fantasizing about the other on their knees in private. if more ETL is like this, I’ll read it! Their dynamic was lovely, and I love how even amidst the competition, they truly grew to love and protect the other, even from their shared object of admiration. all around great!

-dark academia done right! when I think dark academia, I think The Woods. a lot of this subgenre is just “people are morally grey in a school setting, there might be violence” but this. this is truly dark. immoral professors, bodies dropping, cutesy all girls school facade with a literal creature in the floors, blood sharing, secrets. Ugh. gimme more

Dislikes:

Honestly I don’t remember what I was gonna put here. maybe just that I wish I’d been able to see Carmilla inflict more rage on DLF for turning her. that rage/sadness felt a bit untapped; I would’ve liked a little more time spent on how Carmilla felt staring down eternity because her goofy ass older vampire obsession brought her too close to her crazy ex. She was killed, and it felt like she didn’t really process it. Having said that, I understand that Carmilla wasn’t one to follow her feelings to their logical conclusions, mostly due to DLFs hold on her. Multiple times in the book she comes to the brink of truly being angry, saddened, even done with DLF, just for DLF to love bomb or shame her into letting it go. She treats her like rightful frustration and pain are childish, and Carmilla internalizes that to her detriment. kinda talked myself out of my only dislike there, bc honestly it fits more than I thought. I think I just wanted to see De Lafontaine get mollywopped.

That was sooo long, but I actually loved the fuck out of this book and am skipping the long line of next books I have to read A Dowry of Blood.

Content Warnings

bookameme's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Dark, Gripping, & Stimulating

Quote:📖

In the end, I stayed. I had the awful, yawning feeling inside myself that for her, I would always stay.

Thoughts: 💡
The first chapter had a slightly slow and meandering feel to it, but as soon as the story dove into the rivals to lovers vibes I was hooked. There is this moment of intense attraction that quickly burns into rivals that grabbed all of my attention in a sharp flash and from that point on the story had a fast and dark vibe, and I adored every minute of it. The imagery and poetry that permeated everything was spectacular. It was very LGBT positive but still recognized the struggle of marginalized people in the time period. I can’t sing enough praises for this story.

Writing Mechanics: ✍️
The plot is inspired and the language used and structure of it all is brilliant. All the characters were beautifully developed with rich backstories and deep motivations. There were points of the story that were so eloquently written that I had to reread and ruminate on the context and beauty of it. And the poetry! Gah! I can’t sing the praises of it enough! Everything in this book was spectacular!

Fun Bits:
⚜️ Sapphic Vampires
⚜️ Academic Rivals
⚜️ Needing to Please The Teacher
⚜️ Beautiful Poetry
⚜️ Sizzling Romance
⚜️ Plus Size Heroine

Important Note:✨
Standalone companion novel to A Dowery of Blood.

Full Content Warning:⚠️
Uneven Power Dynamics, Inappropriate Relationships Between Professor & Students, Toxic Academic Environments, Blood, Gore, and Murder, Alcohol and Drug Use, Smoking, Racist Political Policies, Homophobia, Religious Discrimination Against Women

Stats:📊
🌶️🌶️🌶️
Characters: 💙💙💙💙💙
Dark Historical Fantasy: Dark Academia, Sapphic Romance, Academic Rivals to Lovers, Vampires, Mystery Vibes
First Person, Present Tense, Dual POV

Content Warnings

mariebrunelm's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

ARC provided by the editor via NetGalley.

It is Laura’s first year at Saint Perpetua's College, and she has been admitted to the very closed circle of Ms De Lafontaine’s poetry class. There, in addition to the heady blend of poetry she has to absorb and create, she faces the immediate hatred of one student, Carmilla, the teacher’s favourite. A web of secrets links the prodigy student and the professor, one that hints at something not entirely proper. Soon, Laura finds herself drawn into the tight circle of their relationship.

This dark academia novel / romance had all the vibes. It felt gothic, rather sexy, dangerous and morally very gray. The relationship dynamics were probably the highlight of this book as it explored the trope of rivals to lovers as well as power abuse in academic settings. I felt these were well executed, introducing a lot of tension from the former and a lot of “ugh please no” from the latter. I was thoroughly enjoying myself and couldn’t put the book down. When I did, however, I felt a little frustrated. I think I wanted a little more from it, especially because of the novella S.T. Gibson drew from — Carmilla. That being said, the original piece is very short and suggests more than it takes a deep dive into its themes, so maybe that’s fair for An Education in Malice to do a similar job. The fact that I wanted more from it probably stems from the fact that I was really enjoying myself, and that’s a good thing.

Rep : bisexual MC, lesbian mid-size MC.

Summary of the CW listed at the beginning of the book: power abuse, inappropriate relationships, toxic academic environment, blood, gore, murder, consensual sexual content (very spicy), alcohol and drug use, smoking.

Content Warnings

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