Genre: dark academia, horror
Published: 47North Publishing, January 2025
My Rating: 4/5 stars
“I was terrified of the possibility: how untethered and expansive it was, how there seemed to be no limit to our belief in the potential of magic. I was afraid that this was a precipice we could not walk back from”
For fans of If We Were Villains, Bunny and The Craft, comes a dark-academia-horror novel about art, obsession, and a hint of the occult.
Set in a prestigious art-college, we follow a group of 5 young women, tangled in a specific kind of deep friendship that can only exist in a high-stake environment, between young people. They are each other’s confidants, each other’s obsession, and each other’s muses when it comes to their art. When artistic-, academic- and peer-pressure combine into a fatal chain of events, their friendship is put to the ultimate test. An occult ritual, aimed to spark their inspirations, results in the death of their professor, and continues to haunt them throughout the rest of their academic year.
What I loved:
My big gripe with many dark academia novels is how often the actual dark-academia-elements get romanticized, thereby missing the entire point of the gerne. Voice like a Hyacinth luckily doesn’t fall into that trap. The codependent, obsessive, toxic and sweltering dynamic between this group of friends (and in the art school at large), is the star of the show from the start. It’s a group of young women, not completely formed in their individual identity, clinging completely to each other in a semi-cultish and ritualistic way, before the actual occult elements even come into play. Their devotion to each other is unrivaled and I loved how the author explored the beauty of that, but also the deep unsettling wrongness.
The characters themselves are largely underdeveloped and it took me a while to even tell them apart, but considering the books themes and its exploration of that formative adolescent-phase in a high-pressure environment, I think that’s the point. They’re pretentious and childish, immature but obsessed with the “image of maturity”. If you’ve even been to college, you’ll recognize their accuracy from a mile away…
I enjoyed how the horror was a mixture of psychological and supernatural as well. Without giving away massive spoilers, there’s a scene involving a bore on a deserted road at night which genuinely gave me goosebumps.
Finally; my biggest concern going into this book was the writing style, as I DNF’ed Pearsons debut because I couldn’t get past the overwritten prose. She greatly improved in that regard. Yes, we’re still teetering on the edge at times, but she toned the purple prose down just enough to land in the territory of lyrical writing, fitting of the dark-academia genre.
What I didn’t love:
The novels major flaw is its predictability. Dark Academia as a genre is absolutely oversaturated and between all the familiar tropes it uses, Voice like a Hyacinth does little to innovate. If you are an avid Dark Academia fan, this is an easy recommendation to get your next fix. But maybe don’t expect it to completely reinvent the wheel or rock your world.
Many thanks to 47North Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Find this book here on Goodreads.
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