As El navigates the Scholomance, discovering the dangers of lurking monsters and shadows — unfortunately by herself — she discovers the importance of survival within the walls of the Scholomance. I gave A Deadly Education three stars, enjoying the magic and paranormal side of the story, but, I found that the story dragged on. The premise of El discovering friendship and magic and her power was something

Book: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Series: The Scholomance #1
Publication Date: September 29, 2020
Tags: Young adult, fantasy, magic, paranormal
Links: Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository | Thrift Books | Abe Books
Read: August 1, 2022 to August 10, 2022

Lesson One of the Scholomance: Learning has never been this deadly.

A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.

Spoiler Free Review

As El navigates the Scholomance, discovering the dangers of lurking monsters and shadows — unfortunately by herself — she discovers the importance of survival within the walls of the Scholomance.

I gave A Deadly Education three stars, enjoying the magic and paranormal side of the story, but, I found that the story dragged on. The premise of El discovering friendship and magic and her power was something I found interesting. The story was a lot longer than I thought, which I found that was the main thing, but also, El was someone I just could not get used to. I feel that perhaps if I were younger, maybe in high school, I would enjoy this a lot more.

El felt a little irritating at times and I felt that took away from the book, that being said, she was really interesting to read about, especially the fact that she fought hard to hide her magic when she began to gain a relationship with Orion and began to use her magic more. 

While A Deadly Education was an interesting read, I just found my interest not as strong throughout the book. The plot and characters felt like they were against each other and as I mentioned above, the story felt too long and the plot just seemed to drag.

I think that if I were younger, the Scholomance series would have been fun to read.

I hope you guys have a great day, please like and comment down below if you enjoyed this book as well or if you plan on reading it!

Loves,

Veronica Chen