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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 4/5
Pages: 384 (10hrs31mins)
Started: 11 March 2024
Finished: 13 March 2024
Summary:
Effy is the only female student at her prestigious university, studying Architecture because the Literature college doesn't think women are intelligent enough for the subject. When the son of her recently-deceased favorite author, whose book on the Goblin King makes Effy feel less alone when her own nighttime visions--or visitations--of the Goblin King overtake her, invites her to come redesign his historical home, Effy is gleeful. Sure, she may have to work with condescending and foreign Literature student Preston, but it'll all be worth it to be in the house where her favorite works were written. But the more Effy digs into the history of the house, and the author himself, the more sinister everything begins to seem. Perhaps her favorite author died with more secrets than she could have imagined.
Thoughts:
This book was beautifully written, and an interesting use of dark academia and gothic tropes. The symbolic conceits used in the book--water/drowning, architecture, gender--were all nicely woven into the plot itself, and it was fun to see all the different ways Reid managed to use those ideas. The overall aesthetic of the book was also just very fun, and I enjoyed the way fantasy and academia were blended since the gothic setting of a crumbling sea manor is very conducive to both. I did find this book frustratingly predictable, though. A few pages in, I knew the Goblin King would be the author's son, that his wife was the real writer, and that the house would be destroyed in a storm. The exploration of sexism in academia was also quite on-the-nose--it's 2024; I don't think there's a need for the simple lesson that women belong in academia and shouldn't be sexually assaulted. I think there are far more complex lessons that could have been explored with more nuance. That didn't make the story in general bad, though, and perhaps my accurate predictions are a symptom of reading YA from an adult perspective, but it would have been more fun if I hadn't known exactly where the story was going. That being said, I did really enjoy reading this book and I'm super excited for Ava Reid to come speak with us next week.