Review copy provided by the publisher.
Violet Everly has been under a curse she doesn’t understand her whole life. Her mother disappeared when she was ten, and she never knew her father. Her uncles have been raising her, but they aren’t very forthcoming about the bits of strangeness she’s seen at the edges of the world. She’s scrambling for clues not just about where her mother might be but why–and what else might be going on.
There’s a young man about her own age she’s only met a few times, Aleksander, who has a different set of clues than she does, but he’s still fumbling around the edges of a greater truth, in the face of older, more powerful people keeping him on the periphery. Violet and Aleksander have to determine whether they can be friends–allies–even more–or whether they will be forever at cross-purposes.
The title is, alas, only slightly apropos. This book has a lot in common with the subgenre known as dark academia, although the existence of people known as scholars doesn’t mean that the academy is playing a significant part. There is a dark glittering vividness to it, and yet the periphery is very vague, this is not a deeply worldbuilt book. There’s a lot of our own world, and only as much fantasy as the plot requires. It was a fast and entertaining read but didn’t leave me thinking of it much after.