Teenager magic users Raven, Atticus, and Dorian’s dreams of attending magic university Sybilline together crash when all three receive rejection letters. Not one to take no for an answer, Raven opts to find a job on campus and help her best friends leverage their unique talents to do the same. The school shows signs of falling apart the moment the three step onto campus, and while their jobs matter, finding the truth about Sybilline and the trio’s complicated relationships must take priority, or they may lose everything.
Smart, spirited Raven can learn and understand any language. Introspective, artistic Atticus senses other people’s thoughts and emotions. And confident, dashing Dorian reads the history of objects with a single touch. They’ve been an unbreakable group since they realized the others also have special abilities, and all they want is to attend Sybilline, the Ivy League college for magic. Rejection only opens opportunities for getting on campus using nefarious means; however, as the three learn more about the school, it becomes clear that lust for magic isn’t always benign, and all magic has a price.
Before I go any further: YES, the protagonists become a throuple. NO, they don’t start the story that way. Honestly, by a quarter or a third of the way through the book, I wanted to shake Raven, Atticus, and Dorian and their teenage navel gazing and yearnings to point out that they functioned better when all three of them shared deep emotional connections rather than awkwardly two-stepping around a love triangle. Even though I didn’t pick up Sybilline looking for polyamory, the progression felt so obvious that I would have been offended if it hadn’t panned out.
Unfortunately, Melissa de la Cruz’s development of the dark academia angle in Sybilline wasn’t as strong as the relationship drama between the main cast. I was interested in the mystery of the decaying school, but the final reveals fell a little flat. I haven’t read a lot of dark academia, so I still enjoyed the ride, but I don’t know if it will have enough bite for hardcore fans.
If you go into Sybilline looking for romantasy with dashes of dark academia, you won’t walk away disappointed. While I would recommend several of the situations for mature YA readers, it was an entertaining ride. It didn’t change my life, but it made for an interesting several hours in a creepy fantasy.
4 Underground Lairs out of 5
Creative Team: Melissa de la Cruz (writer)
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group | G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Click here to purchase.
