I loved The Magician's Daughter by H.G. Parry, so I was really hoping I'd like this. Unfortunately this one's not for me. I do think plenty of people will enjoy it, this might hit the spot for fans of dark academia. The prose is good, the pacing is slower in order to gradually build suspense along with cryptic inserts by the narrator about their regrets. I did guess a few of the big reveals in advance, but not all of them. The audiobook narrator is good.

What didn't work for me was the main character, Clover. I've always struggled with stories about a less popular student giving into temptation and making bad choices to fit in with more popular/glamorous people. I don't know if it's a neurodivergent thing or not, but I've never felt that compulsion and I find it hard to sympathize with characters who give into it. In this book there's a specific effort to demonstrate that it's also Clover's scholarly ambition that drives her to make harmful decisions, perhaps even more than peer pressure, but I found this reasoning just as hard to swallow. The story follows Clover tightly, so although other characters were more interesting or likable to me, they felt too small proportionately in the narrative voice to improve my overall reading experience.