I requested this for consideration for Book Riot's All the Books podcast for its release date. After sampling several books out this week, I decided to go with a different book for my review.

I finished this super fun Dark Academia, Magical School, Murder Mystery yesterday!! It’s witchy with magical creatures and a really fun plot line. The characters are diverse with lots of lgbtq+ rep, and different backgrounds.

I wasn’t too sure how much I’d love it based on the low ratings I’d been seeing, but I managed to go in blind. I binged it on audiobook because I did not want to put my ebook down!

Friends, if you’re looking for a fun witchy adventure then grab this!!! It will keep you guessing, hit you in the feels, and entertain you for hours!

I was captivated by the concept of this book, in which 18 different authors collectively craft the points of view for 18 different students as they endeavor to solve a murder mystery within the walls of their magical school, the renowned Galileo Academy. This unique institution shifts its location, along with its students, to various countries worldwide, boasting a diverse body of students and faculty. However, Professor Septimius Dropwort stands out as a harsh teacher with a penchant for rigid rules and consequences, especially towards students he deems 'other.' When he is suddenly discovered dead, the sheer number of potential suspects hinders any immediate arrests. Can the students unravel the mystery of the murderer lurking among them?

The narrative is skillfully woven through the perspectives of numerous characters, all of whom are students at the academy. Each chapter introduces a different character's viewpoint, with each segment contributed by a different author. While this approach offers diversity, it presents a challenge in the form of a large and somewhat unwieldy cast of characters, making it occasionally challenging to recall who each person is when referenced in subsequent chapters.
Overall it was an enjoyable read.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Reviewed for inclusion on the Texas Library Association's Tayshas List. What a fun book! I loved the concept and the format as well as the wide-spread representation.

3.5⭐
Thank you so much to Delacorte Press and Netgalley for providing an advanced copy of this. All thoughts and opinions are still my own.

This was a such a fun and unique YA anthology. Told from 18 different POVs all written by different YA authors, you follow a magical school and its students as they try and solve the murder of a not-so-loved professor.

One of the best aspects of this book is how diverse it was in its characters and authors. There was everything from disability to trans to queer to POC rep. And it was fantastic. It also had amazing discussions are inclusion and colonization and performative allyship.

While I personally didn't find anything about this shocking, I think this mystery is perfectly tailored to its target audience. With themes and characters that will challenge and relate to teens.

This style and setup was something I've never seen before. And while it was a lot of fun, it doesn't keep you at arms length from each of the characters. Because you only get a few pages from each, you never really get to know a single character well.

Overall, I had a good time with this. I think it accomplished exactly what it set out to do. It has great themes and messages all with an eerie dark academia vibe and unique style & voice.

This book really wasn't for me. Switching between characters so frequently made it so I couldn't really connect with any of them.

There is a lot of representation of various cultures and abilities. The mystery is a "skull scratcher," so to speak...

The premise of this anthology was so promising, but the execution left a lot to be desired for me.

A cohesive YA story told through different short stories, all centered around solving a murder at a magical school. That should be the secret spell to success and make this book super riveting. There are good characters in here, but I feel like this would have worked better if each author had been able to write a story apart from solving the murder. Does that go against the whole premise? Yes. But I do think that with how the overarching story ended up… it would have been better to just not have it at all.

Either that, or have there be more of a consistent tone from story to story so that it doesn’t feel so disjointed.

But then it wouldn’t make for an anthology and allowing people to write in different voices.

Such conflicting emotions with this one, I’m sorry to say.

3 stars

Thank you to the publisher for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary offers a home and education to all manner of magical people, regardless of their background or powers. The school travels all over the world to offer different educational opportunities and magical diversify to its education. When the biggest bigot of a teacher is found dead, the teachers and students try to figure out what happened. Told from the different perspectives and formats in the investigation, this unique story will leave you guessing.

A traveling magical school, murder mystery, and diverse cast, this was super cool and unique. I loved how it addressed sooooooo many cultures and backgrounds, addressing racism, socioeconomic statuses, and sexualities. While each story was written by different authors it felt completely cohesive and I thought the different formats of the stories were super cool too! It definitely read as a young YA book, but did a great job of addressing so many issues that teens have to deal with, and the different personalities of the students offered made this book so rich and interesting to read. I could totally see a younger person rating this higher and loving it, but because it read so young, it kept me from loving it. I did enjoy it a lot and loved the unique story and diversity, but was a 3/5 for me.

Rating: 3.3⭐️

When I picked this book up I was really curious about the logistical aspects of how you put together a book like this.

This is a murder mystery but each chapter is from a different POV and written by a different author, also each chapter takes place sequentially in the story. And I was and still am, fascinated by how you put together a murder mystery where one character’s actions from one chapter would affect all other chapters, with 20 different authors!!

One of the best parts of this book is all the fantastic authors in it. Each chapter I read I was so invested I never wanted to switch to the next POV, but then next chapter I would feel the same. Also the list of authors is incredibly diverse and so are the characters they’ve written. There are many LGBTQIA+ characters, people of color and characters with disabilities. I would have loved to read any of these chapters as a full length book.

I loved so many details of this book: All the different types of magic, the magical school, the characters, the writing… I was also quite invested in some of the pairings, crushes etc. And I loved how usually there is a “chosen one” in these types of books, but this subverts that by making everyone think that they have to solve the mystery that it’s their destiny to do so, which honestly feels a lot more realistic in this kind of a setting.

The resolution to the mystery was a bit of a let down. I was quite invested throughout and there were fun little red herrings and clues sprinkled throughout. But paying close attention didn’t end up mattering that much since only a few of the chapters played into the solution.

Also the person who died is so villainous that he’s more of a caricature of a character, and you’re just left feeling good riddance to bad trash, do we have to solve his murder?

General note: There are a lot of characters so a reference sheet of some kind might be helpful as you’re reading.

Thank you to Delacorte Press and NetGalley for the eARC!!

Thank you so much, NetGalley, Random House Children's, Delacorte Press, for the chance to read this book in exchange of an honest review.

The Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary is a prestigious school for young magicians, recently including people of all cultures and identities, even though this isn't widely accepted. Like the least favourite professor, Septimius Dropwort, known for his harsh rules and harsher punishments. But when he's discovered dead with
a note in his hand, the students have to solve the murder before one of them is blamed, since now everyone is a suspect.
In this brilliant book, the story is told by 18 authors following 18 different students, with 18 different point of views in order to unravel the mystery surrounding the professor's death. Each one is sure of their own abilities and power in discover the truth, as they follow the clues in order to find the culprit. The Grimoire of Grave Fates follows the most brilliant students and magicians, following clues and race to the truth, between magic and hidden secrets in the hall of Galileo.

I absolutely loved reading this book. It's original, funny, creepy and fantastic and it was such a pleasure reading how 18 authors worked together, with each a different student and perspective to write this awesome book! It's something I've never read before and an absolute pleasure! The story is intriguing and I love the change in POVs. Truly brilliant.

I was so excited by the idea of many authors coming together to write this book and the cover was equally gorgeous. But the execution didn’t really work out. It’s too ambitious and the fact that we get introduced to new characters with every chapter made it harder to connect to most of them. But the magic system and world building is very interesting and it was very quick paced, so I didn’t get bored. Maybe I would have loved it more if I could have spent more time with some of the characters.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy. I really enjoyed this and will be getting copies for my shop.

The Grimoire of Grave Fates was a very intriguing and fun mystery full of magic - all that considered, this wasn't exactly what I expected... but I loved it even more than I thought it was. I love that the stories are different but built up to add to the story. I loved the magic system and getting to know the characters.

In this linked anthology, each story hour to hour, we follow different students at a magical boarding school where the murder of a truly terrible teacher has just taken place.

Its made very clear how un-missed this teacher will be as we find out all the horrible things he said and did - but that means <i>everyone is a suspect</i>!

As we follow the students all tracking down and stumbling over clues, the murder mystery becomes the vehicle to to take a delightful amount of pot-shots at everything Regressive Establishment. We get characters full of agency of all colors, genders, sexualities, religions, ethnicities and countries - showing there is truly a lot more ways to tell a Fantasy than from a white, heterosexual European viewpoint.

An excellent widening of the frame to include more of everything and bring so many more people, histories and types of magic to the Fantasy table.

⭐️3.5

I really liked the idea of this book, and overall the plot was really good, but I had trouble keeping up with all the facts revealed. Something important would be revealed and then not talked about for a long time, which would make it a little difficult to follow along with the mystery.

I also didn’t love having to learn about each new characters backstory at the beginning of each new chapter before going back to the plot, but that might just be me.

However, I did find all the the characters very interesting and wish I could have read more about them. I also loved how much diversity there was in this book and the fact that it created a magical boarding school that more readers could feel attached to.

This book was so cool. It’s an anthology but the story are sequential and follow a timeline so you as the reader get to know what happens as the mystery unfolds. If more books like this exist, I want to read them.

These authors voices blended together so well while still telling their own individual stories. I’m honestly flabbergasted at the amount of time and effort it would have taken to make something like this happen and work so seamlessly.

The audiobook was great but I think because of the mixed media context of this book it is one that should be read physically to get the whole experience.

I love boarding school settings and anything to do with magic schools so I had high hopes going into this one! The idea of following individual students each trying to solve a murder was intriguing. Unfortunately, since there were 18 individual short stories it was hard to keep track of all of the storylines and perspectives, especially since some characters make appearances in other stories. I think I would have enjoyed this book more if there were only 7 or 8 stories so that I could become more invested in each perspective. Due to the wide range of characters, there were also a variety of magical abilities and rules that needed to be explained in each chapter which caused the story to feel slow at times. However, I enjoyed the school setting and thought that it was really interesting that the school constantly changed locations.

Overall I loved the concept but would have enjoyed fewer characters to help the flow of the book.

Unfortunately, I don't think this was the book for me. The concept was fascinating to me; each chapter was a different hour in a 24-hour period where a group of students was trying to solve the murder of one of their professors at school. The professor wasn't well-liked, so it was a little hard to sympathize with them, and after a while, all the student's perspectives started blending. It was obvious something foul was afoot, but at 86% I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to continue. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy; as always, opinions are my own.

Five stars for how cool of a project this book is--many authors worked on it, each writing their own chapters, and it comes together as one novel--but four stars for its readability as a novel. A lot of characters get set up for cool stories of their own in their chapters, but the book ends without resolving those potential plot points. And because there are so many characters, essentially each author that participated in the book took on their own character, there isn't a lot of character development.

The story is cool though and the details of the teacher's murder and the clues that were to be found were obviously well planned out in advance. There were some great surprises and twists and each of the students who were featured in chapters were very cool with unique forms of magic, diverse backgrounds, and personal motivations for solving their most disliked teacher's murder.

The Galileo Academy for the Extraordinary is the campus every magic kid in the universe wants to get into, the Harvard of the mystical. The university has recently undergone some restructuring and now talented "normals" are allowed entry, Frontrunner of those opposed is Professor Septimius Dropwort, a bigoted, beligerant bully universally disliked. When he is found murdered early one morning everyone becomes a suspect. and it is up to the students to solve the crime and clear their names. Investigate with 18 students introduced by 18 diverse authors as they follow leads and uncover motives. This was an intriguing construct for a fantasy crime novel as each author brings their own unique voice and creative imagination to the table. With eighteen students and the supporting staff of school officials it was at times hard for me to keep them sorted out in my mind. I enjoyed the varied talents and magical abilities of each student and the delightful mystical creatures. I especially liked the gargoyles. This is a clever although not too complex narrative. With this many creators it felt a little disjointed at times and the same events were rehashed by several characters which slowed the plot line somewhat. A traveling university makes a fascinating world to develop all the disciplines of magic and mystical. Overall an entertaining unique read,