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.
A bloody and enigmatic history of witchcraft is the mortar that binds the bricks of the Dalloway School. There were five bizarre and brutal deaths in the first ten years of its operation. Sometimes you can still get a whiff of the blood as it dances on the air, wrapping its metallic scent around you in a terrifying embrace.
Felicity fell in love with the dark from the moment she enrolled at Dalloway. She had to take a year off from school after the devastating death of her girlfriend and now she has returned to finish her senior year. She is staying in her old room in Godwin House, the most coveted dormitory because everyone thinks it is haunted by the ghosts of the five Dalloway students who died there under mysterious circumstances—many people believed those girls were witches.
Ellis Haley has just arrived at Dalloway. She is a whizz-kid novelist at seventeen and she is also unconventional and whip-smart in every sense of the word. Felicity is seriously drawn to Ellis and she doesn’t understand why she wants to be wherever Ellis is. So that’s why Felicity can’t say no when Ellis asks for her help with researching the Dalloway Five for her second book.
Felicity tries to run but she can’t hide from Dalloway’s occult lore because it is the foundation the school was built on and Ellis won’t let her forget it.
Can Felicity come to terms with her past and move on or will Dalloway’s dark history always have a hold on her?
Pros And My Favourite Parts
There are so many things to love about this story but here’s what I loved the most—the sinister and unsettling atmosphere at the Dalloway school brought the characters and their unique circumstances to life for me. Plus, it was easy for me to get completely sucked into the whisky drinking and poetry readings during the witching hour, the arcane rituals in the woods and the occult history of Godwin House and the Dalloway witches.
I’m going to be totally honest here, this story has surpassed my greatest expectations because Victoria Lee has given me candid and unapologetic depictions of mental illness and they have done a fabulous job of blending the intense relationship between Felicity and Ellis with lots of dark and menacing supernatural elements. Without a doubt, Felicity is definitely an unreliable narrator and this took A Lesson in Vengeance to a whole new level for me because the story was told through her point of view and I couldn’t trust her memories or her experiences and that made me question the motives of every character in this compelling novel. By the way, have I mentioned how much I adore this author’s beautiful and addictive writing style and this gorgeous book cover?
Cons And Heads Up
This story contains graphic descriptions of murder, death, violence, parental neglect, manipulation and emotional abuse, anxiety attacks, smoking and alcohol consumption by minors, rituals involving animal blood, suicide references (no actual suicide), references to racist history at the academic institution and there were a lot of scenes that portrayed a main character who did not take their prescribed antidepressants.
The Conclusion
A Lesson in Vengeance is so much more than a gothic thriller because it aptly portrays grief, guilt, class privilege, sexuality, trauma, mental illness, female desire and obsession. If you enjoy disturbing and thought-provoking dark academia stories that feature arcane rituals handed down through the ages at elite academic institutions, then this is the perfect story for you!
Excerpt from A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee
The Dalloway Five, again. No matter what I do, it seems like I can’t escape them. I left for almost an entire year—I spent nearly a year away from this place, in my own brand of seclusion, but as soon as I come back, there are ghosts at my heels and stories of dead witches on everyone’s tongue.
I don’t recall people being nearly so interested in Dalloway’s history last year. If anything, I felt self-conscious of my thesis subject; discussing it always earned me scrunched noses and twisted mouths.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m writing about them,” Ellis says. “Well, about Margery Lemont specifically. The story is from multiple perspectives, but ultimately questions whether Margery was really a witch, as her accusers claimed, or whether accusations of witchcraft merely reflected a pathologization of female anger.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. My mouth is dry; my tongue sticks to my palate like old gum.
“So of course I had to transfer here, to Dalloway. There’s nowhere else to write this kind of story, is there?”
I suppose there isn’t. Even so, a part of me wants to warn her not to get too close. Margery Lemont has a way of sucking you in and refusing to let go. I wonder if Alex’s ghost is watching us right now, her dead gaze drinking in this scene. Judging.
“Well, good luck,” I offer.
Ellis smiles at me, right as her lips close around the rim of her cup, is still smiling as she takes another sip. “And you? What’s your senior thesis?”
For a moment, last year’s answer perches on my lips. Ellis waits in patient silence while I struggle to swallow it down.
“I don’t know yet.”
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.
At last, I bite the inside of my cheek and admit: “I thought I wanted to study the witches, as well. But I’m not sure that’s such a good idea anymore.”
Ellis’s brow arches at a perfect angle. “Curiouser and curiouser,” she says.
Her amusement hangs on the words like antique lace.
Does she know? Can she tell that, for me, the study was never academic?
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Bits and Bobs
ISBN number: 9780593305829
Publisher: Delacorte Press
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