Summary: Seven university students gather in the basement of a rare and antique books archive/library after closing time. It is against the rules and they aren’t supposed to be there, but they have come to participate in a ritual supposedly borrowed from the ancient Greeks. All the lights go out and then one of the party dies inexplicably and gruesomely, setting off a chain of events fueled by fear, drugs and suspicion. How many will survive to see the morning?

Thoughts: The title and the cover of this novel caught my imagination. I felt that the concept had great potential – a group of overly-educated young people, high on acid and academic achievement, gather to reenact a Greek ritual after dark in the old library. There were so many directions to take this story. Ultimately, the execution was lacking. None of the characters was even slightly relatable, which made it difficult to get invested in any of them. There was a serious lack of character development, meaning their general conduct and actions lacked context and didn’t make sense to me.

I wasn’t entirely certain if the author was trying to demonstrate the baser side of human beings underneath the veneer of higher education, or if she was just trying to say that highly educated people can be stupid too. In any event, I quickened my pace through the last chapters as I needed it to be over.