'An Education in Malice' is one of the most beautifully written books I have read this year. The language draws you in and doesn't let go, fully immersing you in intriguing academia, mysterious poetry seminars, and a deeper underlying secret. From difficult relationships to the slow descent into obsession and madness, I was hooked till the very end.
One critique I have concerns the plot's pacing and how we pull away from the academic setting as a focus about halfway through with the poetry seminars only being mentioned in passing. Being a lover of literature and poetry I would have liked to see this continued throughout with the seminars becoming more ominous with an underlying sense of danger reflecting the changing attitude of De Lafontein. I do, however, understand that the average reader might be put off by a deep focus on the academic and poetic side of the novel.
The relationship that is built between the two main characters is expertly developed and I feel that their ending was very fitting while simultaneously sticking true to their characters.

I really enjoyed this book, although I found it a little slow to begin with and took a while till I got into the story line, I really enjoyed all of the complexities of the characters such as carmilla who appears to be a harsh feeling mean spirited person but as the story develops laura pulls the good and kindness out from with her.

The dark academia vibes made a lovely change for me as a reader and also I really enjoyed the poetics of this book .

*a big thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group for the ARC.

No one writes vampires the way S.T Gibson does.

I initially fell in love with S.T Gibson through A Dowry of Blood. When I saw she wrote another vampire retelling, I immediately shelved it as TBR. An Education in Malice did not disappoint.
This book fulfilled my gothic dreams. It’s dark, atmospheric, and beautifully written. Laura and Carmilla are poets, the fact that this book read like a poem just adds to the beauty of it. Gibson has a way with words, making even the most simple of sentences enchanting. Though the story might be a bit slower than A Dowry of Blood, Gibson drags you right in and wont let you go until long after the tale is finished.

The dynamic between Laura and Carmilla is great. Rivals to lovers, as booktok would say. But that’s not what’s most interesting about this book. It’s the dynamic between the girls and Ms. DeLafointaine. An ancient and possessive vampire. This is a beautiful example of a toxic relationship (though not romantic), and how easy it is to get stuck in one. Beautifully executed without pretending it is a normal way to love. If you read between the lines, you could see Carmilla’s love for Laura turn into some kind of obsession. I could see her love for Laura transform in the same kind of possessiveness DeLafontaine felt over Carmilla. But seeing how the story ended, that’s all open for interpretation.

Gibson has become an instant buy author for me, and will continue to be so. I very much hope she’ll come out with more vampire stories, maybe even some of her own.

Five stars.

As per the publishers request, this review wont be published on Goodreads until two weeks before the official release.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group for the ARC.

I savoured every single page of this. It was an absolute joy to read. Every single sentence had me kicking my feet and beaming! The relationships were so well written, and every character had depth.

S.T. Gibson has rapidly become one of my absolute favourite authors, and this book has cemented Gibson firmly at “instant buy” levels for me. Laura and Carmilla were gorgeously written. I could feel the longing, the love/hate twists, the obsession and the neediness shine through every page.

I also must commend the author for the stunning descriptions of the landscape and the school. Everything felt incredibly realistic, and it felt like I could put the book down, stand up, and find myself in Laura’s room, or hurrying along to class.

This will be a book I will eagerly purchase next year!

As per request from publisher, I will not be posting my review on Goodreads until two weeks from publication date.

It was an absolute privilege to read an ARC of this exceptional book. ST Gibson writes with the most delicious prose that you want to savour and devour in equal measure - a true talent! An Education in Malice contains lyrical descriptions, hauntingly gothic atmosphere, and beautifully complex relationships between the characters. The dual POV was really effective for building the relationship between Laura and Carmilla. I’m also a sucker for books about obsession, and this is a prominent feature of the story. If you like The Secret History and Phantom of the Opera, I think you will love this. Dark academia with vampires is everything I could have asked for!

Honestly INCREDIBLE. I don't even know how to articulate how much I enjoyed this book, except to say I want to read it all over again already.

S.T Gibson writes in such a poetic and captivating way, reading her books (this one and A Dowry of Blood) is somehow like reading one long poem. This is a gothic dark academia with sapphic romance and vampires - could you ask for more?

It did give me The Secret History vibes, but mainly because of the setting (a college in New England in the autumn) and because of the dubious character of the professor/her relationship to her selective class of students. Now, TSH is one of my all-time favourite books, but I somehow enjoyed this more - the interpersonal relationships were so well written, and I LOVED both Laura and Carmilla's characters, and enjoyed reading from both of their perspectives. I also really liked their tension/dynamic with their academic rivalry.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the ARC - this is one of my most-anticipated releases of 2024 so I feel a little emotional I was able to read this as an ARC.

There’s just simply not enough words to describe my love for S.T. Gibson’s books. Saint quickly became my favorite author earlier this year with A Dowry of Blood. When I found out a companion novel was on its way, I couldn’t wait. An Education in Malice is everything I’ve wanted and more. It’s the sapphic dark academia book of my dreams full of yearning and gothic atmospheric. Dark academia is one of my favorite subgenres of fantasy, and if you add sapphic representation to it, it’s even better. On top of that, there’s vampires. I’m a long time lover of vampire media. Dracula and Carmilla are my favorite classics. I’ll read anything and everything with vampires, and having read A Dowry of Blood, I already knew I was in for a treat with Saint’s vampires. An Education in Malice is an easy 5 star read for me, and I can’t wait for everyone to read it this February. This is literally the perfect autumn book — the vibes are unmatched, the imagery is beautiful. It’s a shame this isn’t an autumn 2023 release because October is the perfect time to read it.

Not only is this one of my favorites of the year, but one of my favorites ever. I loved Laura and Carmilla so much. They were so well written and so real. I also really appreciated the plus size representation. It was done so beautifully and I could really relate to Laura. Plus size characters are rare in fantasy, and even rarer in sapphic romances.

As Saint said herself, An Education in Malice is a “bloodstained love letter to ambitious girls, all-consuming desires, and the agonies and ecstasies of academia". If that intrigues you, you must add this to your TBR. You won’t regret it.

🩸 Carmilla reimagining
🩸 sapphic vampires
🩸 obsessive, codependent relationships
🩸 rivals to lovers
🩸spicy gothic romance
🩸 spooky mystery
🩸 dark academia
🩸 plus-size heroine

Trigger warnings provided by author:
uneven power dynamics, inappropriate relationship between professor and students, toxic academic environment, blood, gore, murder, explicit sex, alcohol and drug use, smoking, racist political policies (referenced), homophobic (referenced), religious discrimination against women (referenced)

3.5 stars. Perfect book for autumn with some amazing poetry and worldbuilding. The plot was ok but I wouldn't say it was my favourite!

It took me a little while longer to get in this book, than its did for a Dowry of Blood.
Starts off a lot slower. But on continuation of reading I grew to get really into the dynamic between the characters, and how the plot was developing.
Really a great book! I did enjoy dowry more, but this was also great!

Perfect autumn book

Gothic dark academia, vampires, student - teacher, retelling of carmilla, secrets, desires, and intense rivalry

This book is written so beautifully almost poetic, draws you into the pages, It was sexy and intense..
The characters' connection felt natural and not forced or rushed.
I loved the gothic vibe from this book, and the Enemies to Lovers was spot on..
It was fast-paced and easy to read.

I am living for ST Gibson and her growing catalogue of vampiric retellings. They are a breath of fresh life into the gothic classics and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Ravenous and romantic, Education in Malice is an autumnal hot cup of dark academia tea laced with blood. It’s a tale of obsession, love and desperation. It is Carmilla reborn into a New England 60s university filled with characters each so hungry for their own taste of love and the bite of pain that comes hand-in-hand.

It is about women lost in the world and how they carve out a place for themselves with sharpened teeth and poetry. It is a love letter to art and awakenings. It is the rage simmering just below the surface.

The foil between De Lafontaine/Isis and Carmilla/Laura examines passion in all its forms, fresh and bitter. My only gripe is that this is a standalone set in the same world as Dowry of Blood when I crave more and more with every page. I want to drown in this world.

This is one, I think, that I will come back to again and again.

This was my first time reading a S.T, Gibson book and whilst I loved their world-building abilities, I felt as though I was rushed through the story not giving characters enough time to connect. Rivals turned to partners in the blink of an eye, and there were so many other interesting characters that I desperately wanted to know more about but we only had brief scenes with. I just need more!

A new arrival throws a professors favourite student off. Fighting to remain the favourite, Carmilla tries to bully Laura into leaving the class but it doesn't work. Instead Laura starts discovering a secret both Carmilla and the professor are hiding, whilst also falling for her ill-mannered classmate.

The writing in this book is absolutely breathtaking. To have that level of talent is incredible and I'm very grateful to have been able to read every word. The plot was executed beautifully, the characters were written so well, the dark academia atmosphere was brought to life. Overall, a brilliant book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 4.5

My main critique of this book was that it wasn’t longer! I was desperate to linger longer in this bloodstained world of female rivalry and deadly secrets. If you’re a fan of vampires, dark academia and obsessive relationships, this is the book for you. It was a wonderfully easy read I was sucked into immediately.

S.T Gibson is a master of the kind of lush pose that makes you fall headfirst into the world. Everything was so beautifully described it was as if I was walking the halls of the college myself. The atmosphere was gloriously smoky and erotically charged. Each encounter between Laura and Carmilla had me on the edge of my seat. I wish a little more time had been taken to develop their relationship further, I would have happily sat through a few hundred pages of them battling it but what we did get was wonderful.

This is the kind of book that stays with you for a long time. I can’t wait to see what S.T Gibson comes up with next.

Gibson can do no wrong. With the same delicious prose from Dowry, we are met with a new cast of characters in a dark academia light that fans of The Secret History will be sure to enjoy.

Dark academia, vampires, gothy vibes. Great for autumn. I found the writing a little sophisticated for what I was looking for - I prefer an easy read in this genre but I’d recommend.

thank you to netgalley & the publisher for an e-arc of this one!

there is just something so *chef's kiss* about st gibson's writing. magical, poetic & whimsical, it easily transports you into the worlds of her novels - these mystical, fantastical urban worlds that are home to all kinds of things that go bump in the night.

'an education in malice' is a "sapphic, dark academia carmilla retelling" and follows gibson's debut novel 'a dowry of blood'. our main characters are carmilla and laura sheridan, a new student at saint perpetua college who gets drawn into carmilla's world and infatuation with a professor, de lafontaine. laura and carmilla proceed to have a very intense rivalry turned love affair, all the while vying for de lafontaine's affections and discovering the dark secrets of saint perpetua college.

i was definitely transported to the fall, new england setting that starts this book and was hooked from the beginning - i wanted to know all of its dark secrets, too! laura and carmilla both have distinct voices and we learn about events through their different perspectives. carmilla, always striving to impress de lafontaine and at first acridly jealous of laura, soon faces secrets of her own. laura, outwardly naive but inwardly incredibly perceptive, has to rearrange her world view in light of her involvement with the other two characters. there is a mystery at the heart of this book, but it definitely lives up to the 'dark academia' title, with some blurred lines relationships between a professor and her students.

i think it was a good length though maybe could have been just a little bit longer in the middle, to really address the change in laura and carmilla's relationship (it felt like to me they went from rivals to lovers over a page). i also wanted more development of laura's more 'dominant' proclivities that were hinted at quite frequently, but never fully explored in a way i had anticipated. however, i really liked this one and am excited to read whatever the author puts out next.

'It seemed almost impossible that one woman’s mind could contain so much beauty.'

I was lucky enough to be approved for an ARC of this book and that will never not be INSANE TO ME. I had the pleasure of reading one of my most anticipated books ever by one of my favourite authors EARLY. AND IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT. A Dowry of Blood altered my brain chemistry, I would save that book in a fire. I would sell my soul to read it for the first time again. So ngl I was SCARED but also BEYOND EXCITED FOR THIS. Because I did not want A Dowry of Blood to be a one off, I wanted other books by S.T Gibson to make me experience the visceral feelings that A Dowry of Blood made me feel and oh my GOD did this EVER. I read the first few chapters and had TEARS IN MY EYES BECAUSE I KNEW THAT A DOWRY OF BLOOD WAS NOT A ONE OF AND I KNEW THAT THIS WILL ALTER MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY ALSO. S.T Gibsons books are my JOKER. I will recommend them to EVERYONE.

'Foolishly, I had projected all my pent-up desires onto a pretty face, oblivious to the snake underneath. I thought I had made a friend, perhaps kindled the spark of something more, but now I saw that all I had made was an enemy.'

I have never read Carmilla but this book had me ordering a copy of Carmilla before I even got halfway through it in hopes that I could have CRUMBS of this story after I finished it. The dual POV was PERFECT, the love, not the romance but the pure, raw LOVE between the characters was to die for (literally). The writing was once again LYRICAL, POETIC, PROFOUND, ASTOUNDING. My Kindle has SO MANY HIGHLIGHTS, the most I've ever highlighted in a kindle book and I will hopefully remember to include some non-spoilery quotes throughout this review. I have just read through the quotes I have highlighted and I almost started crying because this is what reading books should make me feel like. Every quote is so profound I need to stare at a wall and think about it.

'I learned how to survive in the cutthroat world of girlhood, where all strangeness was unrooted as ruthlessly as weeds from a garden.'

If you love Dark Academia, if you love vampires, if you love love, if you love brutal yet beautiful plot points, if you love obsession, if you love insatiable desires then you need to pick this up as SOON as you can.

'I needed the structure of higher education to sharpen my mind, and I needed the companionship of other girls to prevent me from growing into eccentricity.'

I read this in October and it was the absolutely PERFECT time to read it. It was one of those books I Could NOT put down, when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about reading it. Just like some characters felt an unquenchable thirst for blood, I felt an unquenchable thirst for reading this book.

'I wanted her to be able to think of nothing but this kiss when she was alone in her bed at night. I wanted her to feel just how much I reviled and desired her, to what maddening brink she drove me.'

I love the small nods to a Dowry of Blood and how the books co-exist in this stunning Universe but also how they are absolute incredible stand alones. I love the deep and emotional things this book made me feel throughout and how the characters were once again strong empowering women.

'I had never experienced that all-encompassing sensation of falling into something bigger than myself, that exquisite pain all the poets wrote about.' - I can't relate to that as that is precisely how I feel about books by S.T Gibson.

Actual rating 4.5/5 stars.

Saint Perpetua's College is isolated and ancient. The girls who study there are close-knit but do they also close ranks to outsiders or will newcomer, Laura, find a new home there?

She makes acquaintances but struggles to feel properly understood anywhere other than in the classroom of her demanding poetry professor, De Lafontaine. She finds Laura a promising student and a rival to further the brilliance of her star pupil, Carmilla. The two girls begin an intense academic rivalry but soon their studies are all but forgotten as new discoveries are made and they must face them together or perish alone.

The dark academia setting and focus are more than just mere backdrops for the tale to play itself out upon and Gibson has put some real thought into delivering her characters into an authentic setting and with some actual classes being attended. Too often do I see this fail to happen but here I could really feel that they were not only college students, but as gifted and passionate about their studies as the professor stated them as being.

I think it is a testament to the author's ability at crafting these aspects that I could have enjoyed reading about them and nothing more, so brilliantly was this academic world created. Pretty soon, however, supernatural entities began to appear and a more gothic focus uncovered.

The truly sensual nature of the writing lent itself well to the appearance of vampiric entities and I adored the nods to classics featuring these creatures, that appeared throughout. The link between lesbianism and vampires in fiction has long been noted and I even studied a course upon it whilst at university. Previously, both had been demonised but here there was merely a connotation created.

Also, surprisingly, a light and innocence arrived into the novel as these romantic relationships were explored. They played out amidst this backdrop of gothic beauty and alongside the appearance of night-time entities. This entire novel was full of Sapphic beauty, gothic creations, and some of the most glorious writing that I have ever had the intense pleasure of reading. A truly brilliant read!

It took me a few days to ponder about this book, and I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't deserve 5 stars just because it's not A dowry of blood. The magnificent jewel ceaseled and carved into every word, every syllable meticulously pigeonholed into the perfect place, with the perfect prose, to tell the terrible story of Constanta.
I'm way too fond of that casket of precious word to see anything ever matching and comparable, but nothing will ever be A dowry of blood.

That said, An Education In Malice is another brilliant twist out of ST Gibson's pen and to quote the author: 'Everything she says sounds slightly conspirational'.
Gibson has a magnificent prose, everything she writes is evocative, poetic, feral and dense. It's always multilayered, full of lush, tension, brutality and intention.
I still find it a brilliant match between her words and the vampire figure, she never forgets about the blood and the lush involved, while she moves through complicated territories within her themes. And I LOVE IT. Absolutely!
Plus, her books are one-sitting-reads: you drink them, you don't read them.

An education in Malice is everything the premises says: a gothic dark academia, enemies to lovers, a Carmilla reimagination, a sapphic story. And it's everything these few keywords won't tell you.
Its the story of Laura, freshly enrolled in the prestigious Saint Perpetua's College. She is one the few lucky students to attend the famous poetry course by Miss De Lafontaine. There she meets the prodigy and protégée Carmilla, a brilliant talent devoted to the professor and extremely competitive. Well, she was bored before Laura arrived, but now she has competition and nothing will stop the two of them to become enemies. Who's the best poet? Who gets the most of De Lafontaine attention?
This competition turns into so much more and it unveils so many secrets and terrible truths.


'Unless keeping us starved for her approval, fighting over scraps of her love like neglected puppies, had always been her aim.'

Laura and Carmilla alternates povs were great to introduce you into their minds and their rivalry. And Carmilla's scenes were extremely uncomfortable, because what she has been through can only end with violence and pain.

'That she was bringing us deeper into her world not out of the goodness of her heart, but as some sort of punishment. The thought sent a shudder up my spine.'

The themes of devotion and the relationship with the master is very complicated and the mess it creates reverberates through the two main characters. They are not blames, they are not perfect, they just end up in a game that is bigger than both of them. The sensual elements of the books are perfect in the context, since they give another layers to the skein of feelings and abuse. I don't find many author capable to do that.

'Love is sacrifice, Professor. Whether it’s you on the butcher’s table or not, someone always bleeds.'
Thanks to Netgalley for providing an ARC.