Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > An Education in Malice

“Everybody’s got a nemesis”.

Laura’s is Carmilla, even though Laura never set out to have a nemesis at all and certainly never meant it to be Carmilla, a girl who burns with incandescence and whom Laura wants with an obscene passion. Every time Carmilla sneers at her Laura only wants to pin her to a wall and see her become pliant.

Carmilla’s nemesis is definitely Laura and she’ll tell you so. Laura’s been her nemesis since the very first evening she walked into Ms. De Lafontaine’s poetry seminar and showed her up. Carmilla’s used to enemies and backstabbing, though. She doesn’t know what to do with, or about, Laura.

And Ms. De Lafontaine? Well, she’s electric, enigmatic, enthralling, and possessive.

These are the most basic facts at the heart of An Education of Malice, and if the book just stopped there I would’ve loved it. But author S. T. Gibson took this concept of power imbalance between a possessive lecturer and her talented poetry students, a needy and obsessive student with no mother and an absentee father, and a earnest but erotic freshman student with a way with words and elevated it. Ms. De Lafonatine becomes a parasite, feeding on the lifeblood and youth of her needy student who longs for a mother figure of any kind. The needy and obsessive Carmilla is pushed and pulled between her admiration and thrall for Ms. De Lafontaine and her passion and fascination for the erotic and earnest Laura. Laura is torn between her all-consuming erotic desire for Carmilla and her pursuit of becoming a member of the Episcopalian clergy. Steadily events spiral and spin out of control.

This book gripped me from page one, with its late 1960s all-women’s small liberal arts college setting (my favorite fashion era, btw), sapphic gothic novella retelling cellular structure, original poetry excerpts, quoted poetry excerpts, and the almost cultish fervor that follows elite lecturers and the most brilliant darlings of smaller college campuses. The word choices are sublime, the imagery is gorgeous, and the sentence structure is immaculate. I enjoyed every single page. Best book I’ve read so far this year.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Dark Academia/Dark Fantasy/Historical Fantasy/Kink Friendly/LGBTQ Fantasy/Sapphic Romance/Vampire Fiction