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After taking a gap year to process the death of her girlfriend, Felicity returns to Dalloway school, an all-girls, quaint boarding school with a magical history perched in the secluded mountains. When she first came to the school, she was drawn to the prospect of witches and ghosts, but the consequence of pursuing it had been losing her girlfriend’s life, so this time Felicity decides not to meddle with magic. Her only goals this year are to graduate and to finish her senior thesis. But of course, her dorm is in Godwin House, which has been rumored to be haunted by five Dalloway girls that died under mysterious circumstances on Godwin’s grounds. As if the haunting history wasn’t tempting enough, Felicity also meets a new girl named Ellis, who only got into Dalloway by publishing a successful novel at seventeen and is instantly drawn to the school’s history. It seems as if every girl except Felicity has gained an obsession with the supernatural in order to impress Ellis. Ellis, however, is fascinated by Felicity. She sees herself as a “method writer”, a writer that has to experience everything that occurs in her book before writing about it, which is difficult to do when writing about murders. Felicity feels inexplicably drawn to Ellis as well, which is why she agrees to help Ellis write her new book when she asks. Together, the two start a secret society with the other residents of Godwin House and a budding romance between Ellis and Felicity begins. 

Like Felicity, I was drawn to Ellis the moment she entered the picture. She was a teenage prodigy with an infatuation with witches and the occult, and the concept of a “method author” intrigued me. She was trying to live through murders and ghosts for a book which showed devotion that was borderline obsessive. Early on, it’s revealed that for her first book, she committed a crime simply to know what it would feel like to get arrested, showing no regret for the stain it caused on her reputation and the people the crime affected. Normally, I’m annoyed at callus characters like these, but Ellis had believable excuses. She wanted to create a book that would change peoples’ lives and even the smallest inauthenticity would ruin it. 

Felicity’s perspective gradually became more and more interesting as the book advanced. She struggles with mental illness after the loss of her girlfriend, and while she remembers almost every moment they spent together, she has no idea how she died, only that it was somehow Felicity’s fault. Her struggle to find the truth throughout the book was interesting to watch, especially as more and more details were introduced. Her arc was perfectly wrapped up in the book’s chilling ending. 

Not every character was necessary. There was a black character who didn’t even get agency and only existed to teach the main character about racism quite blatantly. The other residents at Godwin felt like props rather than people, who only existed to move along the plot and didn’t even get hints of arcs. Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed Felicity and Ellis’s romance. The two of them actually had chemistry and made sense together, unlike most YA couples. Normally, I would have found Ellis’s obsessive behavior unhealthy and disgusting, but she was also supportive and her motives were understandable. Also, Felicity’s reservation about jumping into another relationship was well written and perfectly believable. Out of ten, I would give A Lesson in Vengeance a 9.5.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in gothic sapphic romance, rituals, witches, ghosts, mystery, thrillers, cults, seances, obsessive writers, old libraries, boarding schools, and tragic backstories.