Author(s): Pascale Lacelle

Teen Fiction | Staff Picks - Mim

Your new dark academia obsession . . .

Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best, until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor.

Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess.   Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them.   To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school's most reclusive student, Baz, a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned students and Emory's best friend.

Determined to find the truth behind the drownings and the cult-like secret society she's convinced her classmates were involved in, Emory is faced with even more questions when the supposedly drowned students start washing ashore alive, only for them each immediately to die horrible, magical deaths.  

And Emory is not the only one seeking answers. When her new magic captures the society's attention, she finds herself drawn into their world of privilege and power, all while wondering if the truth she's searching for might lead her right back to Dovermere...to face the fate she was never meant to escape.

Ninth House meets A Deadly Education in this gorgeously dark academia fantasy following a teen mage who must unravel the truth behind the secret society that may have been involved in her classmates' deaths.  

Mim's Review - An excellent YA fantasy novel, alternating between Emory (a girl who was the only survivor of a horrible night the year before) and Baz (brother to Emory's best friend, who died that fateful night). They are both drawn into the mysteries surrounding Emory's magic, secret societies and the insitute that contains those who have 'collapsed'. With magic bound by the phases of the moon and plenty of twists and turns, I am looking forward to the next installment.