The Library at Hellebore
Cassandra Khaw
A deeply dark academia novel from USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw, perfect for fans of A Deadly Education and The Atlas Six who are hungry for something a little more diabolical.
The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.
Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told when she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.
But there’s more to Hellebore than meets the eye. On graduation day, the faculty go on a ravenous rampage, feasting on Alessa’s class. Only Alessa and a group of her classmates escape the carnage. Trapped in the school’s library, they must offer a human sacrifice every night, or else the faculty will break down the door and kill everyone.
Can they band together and survive, or will the faculty eat its fill?
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Review: This had so many promising elements that unfortunately just didn't come together in a cohesive or even enjoyable whole, and ultimately the result was less than the sum of its parts. The juxtaposition of a gothic nightmare boarding school/university with mundane YA concerns like roommate troubles and crushes was jarring and took me out of the story. The purple prose also only really gelled with the former -- it felt contrived and pretentious when describing the latter. Because the world and character building were fairly superficial, relying on vignettes and broad strokes rather than anything of substance, the level of gore felt gratuitous and added for shock value, though I did enjoy the descriptions of students in their monstrous forms. I can't begin to describe how much I hated the necromancer (can't remember his name) and how relentlessly gross and cringey his dialogue was. Adding a star purely for the haunted paintings and the subplot of their artist (which includes a cannibal cult, a lesbian spider creature, and so many spooky deer).
Relationships and/or identities: bisexual female protagonist, wlw side character, nonbinary side characters