I’m talking about when writers spends 100, even 200, possibly even 300 pages building trust between themselves and the readers – only to turn around and throw all of that away (generally in the vein of pouring a ton of gasoline to the established relationship and aiming a blow torch at it), by revealing that, in fact, the character you’ve been sympathizing with is a certified grade-A psychopath. I don’t mean when you realize the person you hoped wasn’t the murderer is, indeed, the culprit.

Here begins my literary-quality rant for this book and on this ploy in general: Unreliable narrators do NOTHING beneficial for the story, or for the reader.

Now, while remaining as spoiler-free as possible (and that’ll be tricky, but I swear I’m trying here), as we proceed further into the story, there are more and more hints to the Big Reveal, and honestly, everything’s going swimmingly – until the narration starts twisting back on itself to become unreliable. Dun, dun, dun!Ĭombine this with the legend of mysterious, unexplainable deaths among former students who were supposedly witches (oooooooh), and with a new enrollee being a prodigy bestselling teen author who wants to research this mystery for her next publication – while not believing in the witchcraft aspect for a second – and Felicity growing rather unsure what’s reality and what’s her PTSD, all of it comes together for a very atmospheric Gothic-esque tale. The story begins with a flowing, erudite, compelling style that successfully introduces the narrator, Felicity, and her tale of woe following a tragic mountain climbing accident, her best friend is dead, and while there’s only circumstantial evidence, rumors abound that it was murder. This was a novel that I didn’t enjoy in the end, for a number of reasons, but it will certainly stick with me, and unfortunately, not in a good way.įirst: I chose A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee because the theme for my book club last month was academia, and I figured dark academia was much more interesting, and this book seemed to have it all – troubled student returning to elite boarding school after traumatic incident, shadow of rumors of ghosts and Salem witches, secretive cliques, and prodigy author researching her next book on creepy campus. Prepare yourself for a bit of a rant, and a lot of former psych major hypotheizing. I’ve read other reviews – both negative and positive – and am a little miffed to find that no one else seems to have latched onto something I find to be an incredibly problematic part of the story. But I finished it over a week ago and can’t stop thinking about a few key issues. So, I wasn’t going to write a review of this book.

A lesson in vengeance review