A Lesson in Vengeance

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Only in young adult novels can this situation unfold, and we are all expected to be like, "ah yes, the Pulitzer is often awarded to debuts coming out of teenagers who write like John Green." Honestly, I love female villains—and female bad girls, unlikable girls, cruel girls, antiheroines, and so on—a lot, partly because society tends to conflate femininity either with gentility and passivity, or with an unstable, erratic pure-emotional state. But to be a proper villain, or a proper bad girl of any stripe, one must have agency. Neither Ellis nor Felicity are passive in their story. They don’t always make good or selfless decisions. They are self ish and shortsighted and obsessive and sometimes callous. All of us have the capacity to do both good and bad things, even if we believe ourselves to be perennially honest, upstanding, morally righteous social citizens.

Vanessa Armstrong Horror Film It Follows to Get a Sequel, Reasonably Titled They Follow 4 hours ago This twisty, immersive thriller is about the fine line between passion and drowning in the darkness of obsession.”– BookList, starred review 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.) The thing is, this novel is written through Felicity’s point of view in first person and when I started this book, I questioned that choice. Wouldn’t third person add more to the intrigue of the story? Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this book in exchange for an honest review! This did not affect my opinions in any way.I look up. Alex’s replacement stands in my doorway. And although it’s past three in the morning, she’s dressed as if she’s about to walk into a law school interview. She’s even wearing collar studs. With queer primary characters, an irresistible gothic atmosphere, and unrelenting creeping dread, this propulsive work of dark academia is both thrilling and thought-provoking.”– Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

While the author is non-binary, I still find the non-binary side character in the book deserving of criticism. The random scene where the character taught the mc about pronouns was so weird to me as a non-binary reader. 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. old and rotten tales about missing girls and desolate mountain cliffs, how Felicity Marrow claimed it was an accident, but no one else was there to say for sure." Victoria, you have a well documented love for The Secret History and the Dark Academia genre. What were the most important elements of dark academia that you wanted to carry into your own work? It's hard to say what the plot of this is, because nothing that anyone does makes sense. This becomes a problem because eventually you are supposed to think some things are confusing, but everything already is.deadhedge on The Secret of the Sul’Dam: Subtle Changes to the Way the One Power Works in The Wheel of Time TV Series 1 second ago 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. Arthur suspects that there is a traitor in Camelot who is trying to kill him. Gwen encourages Arthur that they will find the traitor, but little does Arthur know that Gwen is the traitor. Merlin and Gaius are walking around in the forest, trying to find some clues to who is the traitor. Gaius finds a piece of cloth on a tree, and states that whoever owns it is rich and wealthy. Guinevere then goes in to the Market and is met by Morgana, who uses magic to disguise herself as Hilda and gives her the poison, then leaves.

trigger/content warnings: death, violence, manipulation and emotional abuse, child neglect (past/offscreen), mental health issues (specifically psychotic depression), substance abuse, suicide references (no actual suicide), references to racist history. Why was it important for you to include discussions of your characters’ sexuality—and in particular, queer sexuality—in your narrative? A Lesson in Vengeance is at once dark and mesmerizing, with spine-tingling suspense and mind-bending twists. I loved it.”—Kara Thomas, author of The Cheerleaders and That Weekend The future had felt like a distant and abstract construct, like a life that belonged to another Felicity—a mirror image of myself existing in some parallel world, a girl who stood a chance…”In 2022, A Lesson in Vengeance was listed among 52 books banned by the Alpine School District following the implementation of Utah law H.B. 374, “Sensitive Materials In Schools," [12] 42% of which “feature LBGTQ+ characters and or themes.” [13] [14] Many of the books were removed because they were considered to contain pornographic material according to the new law, which defines porn using the following criteria: Two scenes: one happens in the woods, and one happens in a graveyard. I think those are the scenes I spent the most time mulling over pre-writing (and devoted the most playlist songs to). They’re also the most Aesthetic (with a capital-A).