Lesson One of the Scholomance: Learning has never been this deadly.
A Deadly Educationis set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.
There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.
El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.
Rating: 4/5 Drink Me Potions
A unique spin on a magical school, this isn’t your typical Harry Potter stuff – though I will admit that was an alluring point that drew me to this book to begin with.
If you don’t mind the information overload and trying to situate yourself in this magical school that wants to kill you, literally at every turn, I would think you’d start falling in love with the book. Not the place because the Scholomance only wants to kill you. Even the showers and your own furniture hidden with magical beings called maleficaria who want to suck you dry of your magic.
We follow the inner thoughts and monologue of protagonist Galadriel (hip hip hurray for Lord of the Rings references) – if you can picture that lady in the film this is probably a good representation of the uneasiness others seem to feel around our girl – who everyone thinks is going to turn evil one day, if she isn’t already. It’s not her fault she has an affinity for destruction and deadly spells, is it?
I normally hate stories with giant monologues, little conversations between characters, and generally just looking at the world through one person’s eyes. BUT, this isn’t the case here. Naomi Novik does an amazing job of making El so real to me with such a compelling voice that I couldn’t help but be sympathetic to her plight. Rude? I would totally be there with you, girl, since everyone avoids you like the plague. And that is totally a bad thing in a school where you need at least someone else to even go brush your teeth with if you don’t wanna be killed by some monster. Resisting the urge to show off your killing prowess to those who bully and demean you? Yeah, such restraint!
For you romance lovers out there, this is a fantasy story that has minimal reference to a huge romantic arc, at least in this first book. While there is a love interest (can I even call him that?), Orion never explicitly mentions anything and El is hilariously against the notion of being labelled as a couple the whole time he started hanging around her. However, I could totally see this developing into something more eventually. The progression of being virtual strangers to learning to see one another not for what they tried to present to others but for who they really were inside was endearing and worth so much more than instant attraction alone.
Speaking of relationships, the character development El begrudgingly goes through really tied it all together. She’s the voice we hear and the eyes we see through so seeing how she learns to form some friendships with other students was both entertaining and added value to the overall action plot taking place.
Which brings me back to the fact that this school LITERALLY tries to kill you at every page.
With our protagonist finishing off her junior year, seniors literally have to fight through hell to graduate and escape this school. The slug of information this book provided may have set my rating a little lower but I am confident sets the foundation for what I know will be an explosive sequel as El and friends head into their final year at the Scholomance.
As a final note, I will address a little on the controversies around this book. I will not address all of it, but as I am also a Chinese reader, I wanted to speak up that at least from the standpoint of Asian names and racism, I never once found any of it alarming or insensitive. I have many friends who go by different names or may have a first name that sounds like it could be a last name (or is actually a last name of other people I’ve known). There are also a ridiculous amount of ways to spelling the same Chinese character into English, and I rather enjoyed the diversity in ethnicities in the characters, especially seeing some representation of someone who would look like me. I’m aware people want to point out insensitivities and I appreciate that, but this isn’t one of those cases and you don’t have to defend us on this point in this particular situation.
Overall Recommendation:
A Deadly Education provides another unique voice to our horde of heroines that is sure to last in your memory. Galadriel “El” is standoffish and frankly downright rude to other people, but that’s just part of her charm, right? Or perhaps, her strong will and determination to remain good although her magical affinity is to destruction and death. Paired off with golden boy hero Orion Lake, these two will find themselves in some trouble as the school and its monstrous residents (and I don’t mean the students) tries their skill and will to survive until graduation. When the school literally can kill you at every turn, maybe having dark magic is a good thing? A decent pace and solid foundation in world building, this book prepares you for the craziness that is only ahead in its sequel!
Today’s my birthday and to celebrate my return to the blog, I found this wonderful birthday book tag that seems fun to try out.
Thanks to Antonia @ Always Books who seems to be the original creator of this tag, and also Soph @ Soph’s Book World where I saw this cute tag ❤
Birthday Cake – a book with a plot that seems cliche but you adore it anyway
I love the romance trope that has the love interest literally right in front of you while you go off chasing some other person for a good portion of the book. That is, until it hits you how dumb you are that he/she has been standing there all this time. That’s Hot British Boyfriend and I cannot wait until you all get your hands on it. I will be posting a review on this one soon so stay tuned!
Happy birthday song – a book that certainly deserves all the hype it got
I finally read this book in 2020 and I had such HIGH expectations coming in although I told myself not to. Yet, I still loved it. The genius in Leigh Bardugo’s writing surpasses even the storytelling she did in the Shadow and Bone series. With the TV adaptation coming soon, I’m finally caught up enough to watch it all with only gleeful anticipation.
Happy music – a book with some very beautiful and truly meaningful quotes
Whenever I think of quotable books, my mind always deviates to poetry. I had the pleasure of reading this one a while back and it still sticks out to me as a book that understood my heart, particularly the feelings I hadn’t let go from when I was younger in the throes of first love. If you want to read more of my thoughts about the collection of heart wrenching poems, you can view my review here.
Getting older – a book that you read a long time ago but you think you would appreciate more if you read it as a more mature reader
This was my first high fantasy book in my earlier teen years that really got me into the YA fantasy genre. While I own a copy, I haven’t had the time to really dive into it again with fresh eyes now that I’m no longer the child I was when I first met its characters. It’s still a hit today among new readers and I’m looking forward to its next companion novel, Winterkeep.
Party guests – your most anticipated book release for this year
I was going to put “the second book in the Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo”, but given that it doesn’t even have a cover or description on GoodReads (I know, it’s so sad!), I will be the basic girl who puts anything Cassandra Clare. But it is true because I honestly can’t wait until Chain of Iron comes out. She’s on my auto-buy and pre-order list for a reason.
Sweet birthday memories – a book that kept you incredibly happy during a sad or demanding period of your life
I loved many of Kasie West’s contemporaries over the years, but during my initial struggles with anxiety, her book and protagonist who faced anxiety really helped me come to terms with what I now had for the rest of my life. I knew I wasn’t alone, and it felt good to see someone like me in the pages of my book so I can wrestle with it in a way that feels more distant but also face it instead of running away.
You can read my blog post on anxiety and the YA world here.
Birthday presents – a book that surprised you with how much you loved it
Last, but not least, I had to put Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I have always attributed this book that kickstarted this blog. I loved it so much, surprisingly since I had no expectations going in when I first picked it up in 2015, I had to write a review on it. My very first, in fact. And it spurred this dream to create such book content for myself and for those who may also enjoy what I have to say.
So, thank you, Jenny Han. This place would not be here without you or this book.
It’s now almost the end of my birthday and I feel so grateful for the blessings it is to have a loving family and community I belong in. I hope whatever you face this year, whether your birthday is still under pandemic lockdowns, that you can find one thing to be grateful for. If this last year hasn’t taught us anything, I hope at least the one thing to remember is that life is fragile so cherish each moment to the best of your ability and live it with love and grace.
Hey everyone. I know it’s been a long time and what an interesting hiatus it has been! I am happy to say that I hope to pop back around more often, but let me first say, 2020 has been one heck of a year. I know it has devastated a lot of people around the world, so let us learn to be kind to one another, share love with a stranger, and connect with those around us in whatever way we can over things we mutually love.
Since 2020 kept me home bound, I found myself with more time than usual for reading. And what an excellent year of reading it was for me! I wish I had the time to write out all the reviews for those books, but since I can’t (I’m mostly sorry, but I suppose not really), the best ones that really stuck out to me will have to do.
I will separate each by genre category below. Even if it wasn’t a 5 bottle rating, ending up on this list meant that it left a lasting impact on me long after I turned its final pages. Which is a testament of the author’s skill to do so in my books.
Without further ado!
Historical
Now: Sixteen-year-old Alice is spending the summer in Paris, but she isn’t there for pastries and walks along the Seine. When her grandmother passed away two months ago, she left Alice an apartment in France that no one knew existed. An apartment that has been locked for more than seventy years. Alice is determined to find out why the apartment was abandoned and why her grandmother never once mentioned the family she left behind when she moved to America after World War II. With the help of Paul, a charming Parisian student, she sets out to uncover the truth. However, the more time she spends digging through the mysteries of the past, the more she realizes there are secrets in the present that her family is still refusing to talk about. Then: Sixteen-year-old Adalyn doesn’t recognize Paris anymore. Everywhere she looks, there are Nazis, and every day brings a new horror of life under the Occupation. When she meets Luc, the dashing and enigmatic leader of a resistance group, Adalyn feels she finally has a chance to fight back. But keeping up the appearance of being a much-admired socialite while working to undermine the Nazis is more complicated than she could have imagined. As the war goes on, Adalyn finds herself having to make more and more compromises—to her safety, to her reputation, and to her relationships with the people she loves the most.
Rating: 5/5 Drink Me Potions
While it can also be classified as a contemporary, I loved the historical atmosphere and story more than current day events. Unearthing the mystery of Adalyn was beautiful and heart wrenching at the same time. I couldn’t stop raving about it! Jordyn Taylor’s debut was gorgeously written and perfect for dragging me to an era where lockdown in Nazi Occupation France was maybe even scarier than it is today (but still an escape from our reality at least!).
Contemporary
A fresh, irresistible rom-com from debut author Emma Lord about the chances we take, the paths life can lead us on, and how love can be found in the opposite place you expected.
Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.
Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.
All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built.
As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate ― people on the internet are shipping them?? ― their battle gets more and more personal, until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.
Rating: 4/5 Drink Me Potions
What a winner this was! I couldn’t put it down (even during work hours – sorry, not sorry). Pepper and Jack’s (ship name PepperJack omg!) online flirtations and real life battles were messy, cute, and just the thing to take me away from reality. Frankly, this was the kind of reality I wished I was living instead. The sneakiness of both protagonists, especially through Twitter memes, and general life lessons both teens learned in family, love and war were absolute PERFECT escapism. What a wonderful debut by Emma Lord!
Henri “Halti” Haltiwanger can charm just about anyone. He is a star debater and popular student at the prestigious FATE academy, the dutiful first-generation Haitian son, and the trusted dog walker for his wealthy New York City neighbors. But his easy smiles mask a burning ambition to attend his dream college, Columbia University.
There is only one person who seems immune to Henri’s charms: his “intense” classmate and neighbor Corinne Troy. When she uncovers Henri’s less-than-honest dog-walking scheme, she blackmails him into helping her change her image at school. Henri agrees, seeing a potential upside for himself.
Soon what started as a mutual hustle turns into something more surprising than either of them ever bargained for. . . .
This is a sharply funny and insightful novel about the countless hustles we have to keep from doing the hardest thing: being ourselves.
Rating: 4/5 Drink Me Potions
In a year full of divides, particularly racial divides, exploring books with POC and just generally being more open to others’ experiences is not only a must, but a blessing to be able to do. Learning to listen and see how others experience life was definitely found in Ben Philippe’s Charming as a Verb. The first-generation immigrant child experience in a big city with the pressures to succeed for their parents is something I understand, and I love how it was described here! Peep the Canadian reference in there and I was falling in love! Snarky characters plus incredibly real teenage experiences depicted helped me see and be a more empathetic person to everyone around me, especially to my Black brothers and sisters out there.
High school senior Keely Collins takes on firsts, lasts, and everything in between in this sweet, sex-positive rom-com for fans of Meg Cabot and Jenny Han.
It seemed like a good plan at first.
When the only other virgin in her group of friends loses it at Keely’s own eighteenth birthday party, she’s inspired to take things into her own hands. She wants to have that experience too (well, not exactly like that–but with someone she trusts and actually likes), so she’s going to need to find the guy, and fast. Problem is, she’s known all the boys in her small high school forever, and it’s kinda hard to be into a guy when you watched him eat crayons in kindergarten.
So she can’t believe her luck when she meets a ridiculously hot new guy named Dean. Not only does he look like he’s fallen out of a classic movie poster, but he drives a motorcycle, flirts with ease, and might actually be into her.
But Dean’s already in college, and Keely is convinced he’ll drop her if he finds out how inexperienced she is. That’s when she talks herself into a new plan: her lifelong best friend, Andrew, would never hurt or betray her, and he’s clearly been with enough girls that he can show her the ropes before she goes all the way with Dean. Of course, the plan only works if Andrew and Keely stay friends–just friends–so things are about to get complicated.
Cameron Lund’s delightful debut is a hilarious and heartfelt story of first loves, first friends, and first times–and how making them your own is all that really matters.
Rating: 3.5/5 Drink Me Potions
I’m a sucker for friends-to-lovers trope, especially best friends. While there were some things I didn’t love, including the slowness in reaching said angst and trope, this was all the makings of a true guilty pleasure read so I’m proud to say that this book stuck out for me. It’s not super serious but mostly fun. Keely learns more about what she wants, who she is and what she is worth (virgin or not), and I’m all for that.
Fantasy
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
Rating: 4.5/5 Drink Me Potions
No introduction is needed here, but this was by far the best YA to adult transition book I’ve read yet (I’m looking at you, SJM). I loved the intrigue around Darlington’s disappearance, and the information never felt like an overwhelming tidal wave hitting me all at once. Pieces came together nicely over time and set a wonderful foundation for this world of dark magic on Yale campus. I almost didn’t want to leave it, and am highly anticipating the sequel!
Bone Criers have a sacred duty. They alone can keep the dead from preying on the living. But their power to ferry the spirits of the dead into goddess Elara’s Night Heavens or Tyrus’s Underworld comes from sacrifice. The gods demand a promise of dedication. And that promise comes at the cost of the Bone Criers’ one true love.
Ailesse has been prepared since birth to become the matriarch of the Bone Criers, a mysterious famille of women who use strengths drawn from animal bones to ferry dead souls. But first she must complete her rite of passage and kill the boy she’s also destined to love.
Bastien’s father was slain by a Bone Crier and he’s been seeking revenge ever since. Yet when he finally captures one, his vengeance will have to wait. Ailesse’s ritual has begun and now their fates are entwined—in life and in death.
Sabine has never had the stomach for the Bone Criers’ work. But when her best friend Ailesse is taken captive, Sabine will do whatever it takes to save her, even if it means defying their traditions—and their matriarch—to break the bond between Ailesse and Bastien. Before they all die.
Rating: 5/5 Drink Me Potions
A unique world of ladies capturing their men on bridges and honing their skills through the animal bones they kill and keep, this was a different YA fantasy than Kathryn Purdie’s other works and I was surprisingly captured by it. With different POVs from the pair of best friends whose lives were forever altered when they encounter the wrong (or right?) man on the bridge, this fun and heartwarming story definitely drew my imagination into the depths of its pages.
Mystery
Milly, Aubrey, and Jonah Story are cousins, but they barely know each another, and they’ve never even met their grandmother. Rich and reclusive, she disinherited their parents before they were born. So when they each receive a letter inviting them to work at her island resort for the summer, they’re surprised… and curious.
Their parents are all clear on one point—not going is not an option. This could be the opportunity to get back into Grandmother’s good graces. But when the cousins arrive on the island, it’s immediately clear that she has different plans for them. And the longer they stay, the more they realize how mysterious—and dark—their family’s past is.
The entire Story family has secrets. Whatever pulled them apart years ago isn’t over—and this summer, the cousins will learn everything.
Rating: 4.5/5 Drink Me Potions
One of my last reads of 2020, this latest mystery from Karen M. McManus didn’t disappoint. I loved the 3 Story cousins and their individual crazy home life. They each came to the island for their own reasons (and their own parents’ pressures) and were thrown into the web of secrets they cumulatively brought. The pace was great (in fact, I wish the book was a little longer), and by the end, I wished I could meet these Storys because I felt like I knew them. A different kind of twisty end than I expected from McManus, but it still delighted me with a couple of curveballs.
Contemporaries definitely won the lot in 2020, but maybe because a dose of rom-com felt better than dark fantasies or super intense narratives in a year where people may want to forget themselves and live someone else’s lives for a while.
I don’t know what this year may bring, but what I do know is that we’re still all in this together. Let us not forget that and continue holding onto hope and love.
In the meantime, I will try to update you with more fun reviews or things I’m looking forward to this year. Hope you are having a good 2021 so far!
