Thank you to the author for allowing me an e-ARC for this book!
Unfortunately I didn’t finish this book as I found it quite hard to focus on and I was a bit lost with the direction of the book at times. I don’t think it was a book I’d enjoy but that is not reflective of the author or their writing skills which is why I’ve given it 3 stars! The percentage of the book I did read showed great writing skills and this book is going to be perfect for some people

I truly do not have the words nor the intelligence to explain just how incredible this book is. I am of the extraordinary good fortune to be friends with the author, and while naturally that was always going to have coloured my opinions coming out of this book - I can truly say if this had been some complete stranger I’d have said the exact same thing.

But from the incredibly privileged position of having been there (usually pissing her off via text message) through a good chunk of lifetime and writing process. I know for a fact just how much love was poured into this book.

And every page sings with that.

Now of course love doesn’t always good book make. Ask my me x Bucky Barnes fanfictions from me teenage years. So without that context is this a good book?

In every describable way.

This feels like an absolute love letter to fantastical academia with undertones of horror that truly leave your heart racing.

1. Characters

Saying I have a favourite character of this book genuinely feels like being asked to pick a favourite kid. Gun to my head? Bridge with Tate as an incredibly close runner up. They’re so fleshed out, they’re funny and intelligent without being facetious and absolutely stand out from the crowd.

Sam is beautiful. If that woman has 0 fans I am dead, and honestly probably raging in heaven about how good this book is. She is heartbreaking, strong, funny and realistic. Tate is everything you could want in a partner and I’m frankly furious he’s not real, kind, warm, hilarious and a backbone to this story. The entire cast is gorgeous and I could go on forever and ever. But if everyone loved the way these characters loved one another in a fictional goddamn book, the world would be far better for it.

Everything is written with such absolute passion, depth and dimension that you truly feel like the characters were sat parroting in her ear with every word typed.

2. Plot

I truly cannot put into words how good this plot is. It’s got a mysterious Scottish academy with a lake and dangerous professors. A mental health rep that leaves your heart aching and watching Sam grow through it is astonishingly beautiful. You’ve got a roadtrip with a group of dear friends and several crashes (as you do). And some good old fashioned fight sequences with a villain you truly want to knock the teeth out of.

The twist I already knew (I read the first version of this years ago and get to say nah nah nee nah nah for it) but it’s so beautifully foreshadowed and interwoven into this book that it slaps you like a brick wall when it finally comes to light.

3. World building

This left me mad practical dreaming isn’t a thing. Truly.

and also not entirely unconvinced that Robertson isn’t actually a Dreamer because how she wrote such a novel magic system in such an in depth way? I truly can’t fathom it.

4. Language and Theme

Robertson writes in a way that both makes you fall in love with the world and feel entirely afraid of it in the space of a breath. The poor woman has been borderline harassed since Tuesday (when I began reading) with quotes and words to the effect of “omg” “you’re an evil cow” and “marry me.” If I were to tattoo myself in all the gorgeous favourite bits of pose from this book, I’d have no skin left.

Love and friendship particularly she writes with such absolute voice and precision that makes you pine to feel that kind of love (though I’m admittedly a lonely feckwit so that could well just be me.)

Do I recommend this book? Without a breath of hesitation.

I wanted to love this book. The premise seemed like what I usually enjoy. But the writing made it incredibly difficult to get into, and unfortunately, I ended up DNF-ing pretty early.

From the first few pages, the prose felt dense and meandering. Sentences stretched on without clear direction, piling metaphor on metaphor in a way that often obscured the meaning rather than deepening it. One early passage reads:

“She was eighteen and still unused to a reality where she was definitely not dying or imminently going to be, so enough things were impossible without the involvement of the even vaguely metaphysical.”

That’s a single sentence, and all of what I read feels like that: long, tangled, and hard to untangle emotionally or narratively. It’s a style that might work better in small doses or with more structure, but here it overwhelmed the story and left me constantly trying to decode what was actually happening.

I stopped reading less than a quarter of the way through. I found myself rereading passages just to grasp the basic meaning, and not in a rewarding, layered way; more in a “what did I just read?” way. I never felt grounded in the character’s experience or in the world itself.