vish's Reviews > An Education in Malice

“I learned how to survive in the cutthroat world of girlhood, where all strangeness was unrooted as ruthlessly as weeds from a garden. I domesticated my own wildness, starved the odd appetites inside me.”

good news is that i didn’t hate this book. bad news is that i didn’t love it either. don’t get me wrong, it’s sexy and tackles important themes of exploring one’s sexuality, grooming, and manipulative partners but the plot didn’t work for me. maybe there was a deeper meaning in the book that went over my head and if that’s the case then feel free to let me know in the comments :)

nothing happens in the first 40% of the book. the plot in the first half of the book is just our fmcs denying their attraction for each other and competing for their favourite professor’s validation. there’s no urgency or suspense in the plot like i wasn’t DYING to know what happened next, which is a bummer because i didn’t feel excited continuing it. even the ending was underwhelming and anticlimactic. i prefer books that bring out strong emotions in me and leave me ruminating on it after it’s finished.

whoever said this book had “murder mystery” lied because the murder happens after the 50% mark and it isn’t even a mystery who did it. granted, it’s a retelling of the 1872 Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu and as i wasn’t familiar with that book, i did not have the slightest clue what this would be about. however, i’ve read and loved S.T. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood so i was really excited to read another one of the author’s works but Education just didn’t hit its mark.

i can tolerate plotless books so long as they have formidable characters but both carmilla and laura came off as rather bland to me. they were interesting for sure, but neither of them stood out in any way. i’m also not a fan of instalove as it’s one of my most disliked tropes and laura was already head over heels for carmilla during their very first meeting. they did have a slow burn of sorts later on but i was kinda thrown off by how quickly she became smitten with carmilla. i did like the whole “i hate you but i also find you incredibly irresistible” thing that they had going on for majority of the book but ultimately, i expected much more in terms of plot, pacing, and mystery.

the writing style was the best part of the book. it was poetic and atmospheric which is very fitting as the setting revolves around poetry a lot. the only complaint i have about the writing is that it reads more like a journal or a diary at some parts. not that it’s a bad thing, but i felt like i was reading some sort of memoir but maybe that’s how Carmilla was written too?

overall, this was an OKAY book but i really didn’t vibe with it. it’s a quick read and there is no plot whatsoever but if you can ignore that and just focus on the sapphic vampires then you might enjoy this.