I found this book extremely compelling. I could hardly put it down! I love dark academia and multiple viewpoints and this book had both. The descriptions made it play out in my head like a movie, and it’s a movie I would definitely see!

I’m not sure if there needed to be another book in this series. The first was fast paced and this one was very slow and took me a while to get into.

I received an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of this book for free in exchange for my honest review from NetGalley. Having read Nossett's debut novel, I couldn't wait to read the sequel. At the same time, I was unsure if it would live up to its predecessor, so I put off reading the story for a while.

It's been quite a while since I finished reading The Professor, but I find myself still thinking about the story and characters and wanting to lose myself in the story all over again. I am hoping for another installment and that this will end up being a long running series. For whatever reason, this book and series has just really stuck with me.

From the first page all the way to the last page, Lauren Nossett weaved an intricate story that absolutely captivated me. It was one of those books that I couldn't wait to finish, but at the same time, I didn't want it to end. I totally wanted to play hooky from work to finish it!

Although the author does recap what happened in the first novel throughout The Professor, it's best to read the first book before reading this one. Five out of five stars is what I gave this book.

Started off so great — I was engrossed. Then the wheels came off, and I grew to hate everyone and everything and every page. Two stars for the first quarter.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Flatiron Books for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it now in your local and online bookstores and libraries.

"The Professor" failed to capture my attention as the narrative struggled to engage me from the beginning. Despite my attempts to connect with the story, I found it challenging to develop any genuine interest in the characters or the plot. The lack of a compelling hook made it difficult to invest in the protagonist's journey, leaving me disconnected and indifferent to the unfolding events. While some may appreciate the book's unique qualities, I personally struggled to find the elements that could have made the story more captivating.

Lauren Nossett did a fine job with her second novel. Fashioning her protagonist as an unlikeable person
made for a thrilling read. The stumbling interplay between Marlitt, the protagonist, and the people in her orbit was convincing. The ending was a wonderful twist. Kudos to Lauren - keep on writing!

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I did finish it but it took me about 1 month when I can usually finish a book I am into within a day. A big part of this was probably that I didn't realize this was the second book in a series, and although you don't need to read the first to enjoy this one, I think it would have helped immensely.

I was very put off by the main character and her odd decisions. The way she involves herself in this particular case is so unhealthy and deceiving to all others involved. The university setting was the one redeeming factor, I though the author did a great job painting the picture of the school and the politics of being a professor. The plot was mainly where it went wrong, there were a bit too many plot holes that were never resolved. To be honest, I love dark acedamia books which is why I picked this one up, but I can't recommend it to my audience.

Thank you Netgalley and Flatiron for the copy of The Professor in exchange for an honest review!

Marlitt (aka Marley) Kaplan is adrift, she is living with her parents. She has scars from a fire at her home. She's no longer a police detective. She has been doing research for her father, but this is unfulfilling work for her.

Enter Marlitt's mother, she brings her friend Dr. Verna Sorbek. Verna is being investigated in the suspicious death of Ethan Haddock, one of her students. Rumors abound that this is a romance gone wrong between professor and student. Marlitt dives into the investigation, even going so far as to move into the victims former apartment.

What I liked: the book was suspenseful, Marlitt was an engaging character, after the first 1/4 of the book was out of the way it moved fairly quickly, the other primary characters in the book were well developed, the explanations of depression and anxiety were well written, and the ending was just BOOM great!

What I didn't like: there was a lot and I do mean A LOT of alluding to Marlitt's trauma from the fire and loss of job without backstory. To me this hinges on her state of mind in the story and the why, especially initially why she did some of the things...the way she did them. There's also characters from her "former life" as a detective that were not developed/explained as much as I thought they could have been. When going to place this review, I discovered that this book is a sequel and that explained to my the "why" of the lack of backstory. I feel like this book would have gotten the full 4 stars with that backstory. However, it only reaches 3 without. Definitely, need to read book one first. Thank you to #netgalley for this ARC for an honest review.

Super fun and exciting read from Lauren Nossett. I couldn't put this one down and found myself anxious to keep reading. Loved every twist and turn.

Thank you Lauren Nossett and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Dr Verbena Sobek, a new Professor of German at the University of Georgia in Athens has been finding her first year in the position tough. Not only because the heavy workload of teaching and grading, but also dealing with students who don’t want to be taking the course and make her life difficult. However, she has one star pupil, Ethan Haddock, who always does his homework and outshines everyone else. She tries not to show favouritism, but it’s difficult when he’s only one who is truly engaged.

After the winter break, Verbena notices Ethan seems depressed and his grades are slipping. She tries to talk to him and get him to seek student counselling, but he only seems to be getting worse. When Ethan is found dead in his apartment by one of his roommates, it’s assumed he committed suicide. But then rumours start to circulate that he was having an affair with his German professor and Verbena is suspended while the University investigates.

Verbena’s senior colleague Dr Helena Schmidt-Kaplan doesn’t believe that Verbena would have an affair with a student. However, the media is relentless in hounding her so Helena asks her daughter, Marlitt, a former police detective, to find out what she can by going undercover on campus. Not much older than Ethan’s classmates, she easily blends in on campus and talk to them. When Ethan’s roommates Spencer and Sadie advertise his room vacancy, she is also able to move in to his old apartment and get close to them.

While Marlitt is the narrator for the current events in the novel, two other voices ‘Him’ and ‘Her’ fill in the details of previous events. The novel builds gradually in a slow burn as the scene is set, gathering pace in the second half of the novel as events unfold and the reader starts to question their assumptions about what really happened to Ethan. A major, clever twist will ramp up the suspense, finding Marlitt in the centre of a dangerous situation.

As Marlitt Kaplan’s time as a detective is the subject of a previous novel, ‘The Resemblance’, also set at the University of Georgia, some readers may wish to read this first to learn more about her backstory. However, I found that ‘The Professor’ worked well as a stand-alone mystery, although with a scant amount of information about why she left the police force.

The novel raises important issues surrounding student mental health, especially for new students learning to adapt to a new environment, and the inability of college counselling services to deal with the increasing problem. Although Verbena tries to give Ethan a sympathetic ear, she knows she is not trained to provide counselling and must draw a line somewhere between compassion and becoming too involved. She is also coping with her own problems of being a young academic seeking tenure and coping with heavy workloads at the expense of neglecting her own social life and mental health. Lies, deceit, manipulation and power struggles all come together to make this cleverly written mystery a compelling read.

Well, I should start off by saying I had no idea this was a sequel to a previous book, and I find myself wondering if I would have enjoyed it more had I read the first book. I had two fundamental challenges with The Professor: 1) I found the generic use of the Him/Her chapter headings confusing and hard to follow. It was not always clear to me which Him/Her we were supposed to be learning more about. 2) The author asked to much of me as a reader to simply trust that I should already understand and/or care about the past of the main characters and their frayed relationships. For me, this book required too many leaps of faith on my part as a reader. Thanks you to NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for this review.

From my blog: Always With a Book

Last year, I read The Resemblance by Lauren Nossett and really enjoyed it. I was thrilled to hear that we were going to be getting another book with the same setting and main character, and I’m so happy to say this is another winner!

While this is not technically listed as a sequel or part of a series, I will say that I think it is very beneficial to have read the prior book where you are first introduced to Marlitt Kaplan. Not that the author doesn’t give some backstory here, I just feel you would have a better understanding of the characters and certain situations. This is a a self-contained mystery, though, so no worries if you haven’t read the previous book – perhaps you’ll be inclined to read it after reading this one!

I love that we have another dark academic story here, this time focusing on the relationships between professor and student, as well as the pressures that both professors and students find themselves under, and even going so far as to delving into mental health on campus. I felt this was something that was so realistic and easy to relate to, especially as I remember my days on campus as a student and could easily recall the pressure to do it all and try to fit in.

This is another police procedural, even though technically Marlitt is no longer officially working for the police department after events that happened in the last book. That doesn’t stop her from looking into the death of a student when a professor is accused of wrong-doing. She may not always make the best choices, but she does want to find justice and for that I cannot fault her. I loved the twists and turns the book took, never quite knowing where or how it was going to end up. Secrets abound and that just adds to the overall tension.

This was definitely another engaging, captivating read and I hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Marlitt.

I didn’t realize that while it’s not a part of a series per say, The Professor is the second book featuring Marlitt Kaplan. If you’d like to read the books in order than pick up Lauren Nossett’s The Resemblance first than more on to The Professor. However, I have yet to read The Resemblance, and this can 100% be read by itself.

UGA student, Ethan Haddock, has been found dead from an apparent suicide. As rumors of an affair with German professor Verena Sobek rise up, Sobek is thrown into a Title IX investigation and officially under investigation by the police. Marlitt Kaplan’s mother happens to be a colleague of Sobek and as a result pleads with Marlitt to help clear Sobek’s name. With time on her hands, Marlitt dives into the lives of not just Haddock and Sobek, but into the lives of the people surrounding Haddock.

As a major fan of Tana French, when they compared Nossett’s writing to French’s I was sold. Nossett has done an excellent job of weaving multiple viewpoints into a slow burn police procedural-esque story. While the main plot is discovering what lead Ethan Haddock to suicide, it doesn’t rely on the traditional shock factors to keep readers engaged. Instead Nossett slowly builds up the suspense with each chapter and by alternating 3 POVs: Marlitt’s, an unknown Him, and an unknown Her. She also highlights the struggles, competitive nature of the academic arena, both for students and professions alike, and the impacts this environment has on mental health.

Marlitt’s character is fantastic, complex, and shows significant development throughout the story. I think I would have enjoyed the story a bit more if I had read The Resemblance first though. We get plenty of background on Sobek and Haddock, but we only get snippets of what has driven Marlitt to this place in life. I believe most of that is covered in the first book, so my recommendation is to read it first to gain the full effect of her character growth. Otherwise, she was a great lead for this mystery novel.

I primarily listened to the audiobook, which is excellently narrator. I enjoyed the added accents of the characters, as they were well done and not over the top. I did feel that the book could have been cut down a few chapters, which is why I took a star away, otherwise this is a great option for slow burn mystery fans.


The Professor is out now. Huge thank you to Flatiron Books and Macmillan Audio for my advanced copies in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review, please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my Instagram @speakingof.books.

The Professor is Nossett’s second novel after 2022’s The Resemblance (which I also rated five stars), the second to feature Marlitt Kaplan as the protagonist, and so, of course, it follows the same genre feel as its predecessor: a murder/crime thriller with dark academia themes set on and around the University of Georgia campus. Where The Resemblance has a plot centering around sexual assault, rape culture, and Greek life; The Professor focuses on the mental health of both professors and students, how little colleges and universities do to help either party deal with these matters, and how hard it is for professors to maintain a healthy work-life balance with their workloads and pressure to publish or perish in order to gain tenure so they don’t have to work for peanuts.

It’s also a bit about setting boundaries, knowing when to say you’re sorry, acknowledging your failings, accepting the things you can’t change, and rebuilding your life from the ashes.

I am going to note that this book can be read as a standalone, but it’s a whole lot more enjoyable and easier to relate to if you read The Resemblance first. Telling you why would require a lot of exposition, and that’s not what reviews are for. But you’ve been warned.

Lauren Nossett has honed her protagonist, Marlitt, into a fine blade, and she knows exactly how to wield her. You can tell that Nossett must spend a lot of time living inside Marlitt’s head, just thinking and hypothesizing as to how Marlitt would react to any given situation, because Marlitt’s inner narrative and dialogue just flows so seamlessly throughout the pages. There’s not a single hiccough. Nossett also thinks every single plot thread through, leaving nary a string loose. She doesn’t rely on logical fallacies to hold up her plot: you won’t find any red herrings here. We are shown the exposition via the lens of those who experience it and those scenes inform the characterizations of the major players in a way third-person POV never could. It was a very effective tool to humanize characters we otherwise wouldn’t have gotten close enough to so we could empathize with their pain. Putting us right there with them helped us identify with their plights and struggles, letting us inside their heads where not even Marlitt could go.

It’s another brilliant effort by Nossett and I’ll need it in my bookcase ASAP. I have a feeling the next one will end up there too. I can’t get enough.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. In this case, I’d like to extend my thanks directly to author Lauren Nossett, who was kind enough to personally ensure a NetGalley widget made it to my inbox. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review was written without any offer or acceptance of compensation. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Crime Fiction/Crime Thriller/Dark Academia/Literary Fiction/Murder Thriller/Psychological Fiction/Suspense Thriller

Would recommend for fans of…
🎓 Campus novels
🎓 Dark academia
🎓 Tana French

The Professor is Lauren Nossett’s follow-up to her debut, The Resemblance, and follows (former) Detective Marlitt Kaplan as she investigates a professor’s potential involvement in a student’s death.

This book is tricky to review as it’s the second in the series, but in short I really enjoyed it. I was neutral on Nossett’s debut, and felt that the story tried to do too much and didn’t stick the landing. However, in The Professor, Nossett has really dialed in on the mystery, balancing it alongside Kaplan’s personal life and the POVs of two other characters to create a really propulsive story that I read in one day. It reminded me of Tana French’s The Likeness, both in terms of story and general vibes. The ending was jaw-dropping and had the exact level of shock factor I want from a mystery, so if you’ve read this, please DM me to discuss.

While many detective series are written so that you can skip around as needed, this one is one that absolutely needs to be read in order. While you can pick this one up first and still enjoy the mystery, you’ll be missing all of Kaplan’s backstory and why she chooses to investigate in the way she does.

I have no clue if there are plans for a third book, but I’ll happily read it if and when it is available. The Professor is out today. Thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Professor by Lauren Nossett is a gripping novel of dark academia and mystery. This is the second book in the Marlitt Kaplan series.

Disgraced ex-detective Marlitt Kaplan is called upon by her professor mother to help when her friend, Professor Verena Sobek, is questioned in the death of one of her students and investigated for a Title IX violation. Ethan Haddock was found dead in the bedroom of the apartment he shares with Spencer and Sadie, an apparent suicide. But the detective involved in the case thinks it's suspicious, and isn't backing down from his investigation. While looking into Verena's relationship with Ethan, Marlitt sees a roommate wanted sign in a window of Ethan's apartment building. On a whim, she decides to apply for it, and "Marley" is soon living in Ethan's old bedroom with his roommates. Marlitt tries talking to other students, Spencer and Sadie, and Verena to try and put together what happened. Did Verena have an inappropriate relationship with Ethan? Were they too close? Was he obsessed with her? Did she cross a line? And did she have anything to do with his death? Was it really suicide, or was it murder?

The novel was well-written and researched. For Professor Sobek's point of view, there were many times she was in the classroom teaching German, and although I don't speak German, it seemed that the author knew what she was writing. Verena's reaction to everything happening is what you would expect from someone in real life. Marley's going undercover with Ethan's roommates even though she's no longer a detective is dangerous and unwise, but she's a brazen character who leads with instinct and not rules. My only issue is that Marlitt is angry with her parents because they lied about her having an older brother that passed away at a young age. I don't understand why she's angry about this, as I don't believe it's something they needed to tell her, it's not as is he was living across town and they kept him from her. And that plot line isn't really delved into very much other than to say that her parents are liars and she's not happy with them.

All in all, this is a great mystery filled with secrets, deceit, family issues, and interesting characters. If you enjoy dark thrillers from Karin Slaughter or Ruth Ware, then you should definitely give this one a try!

Thank you to @NetGalley and @flatiron_books for a digital copy for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own, given freely.

This review is based on an uncorrected e-galley of this novel.

Wait, this is a sequel to another book? No wonder I was so confused trying to read it. Doesn't work as a standalone.

The Professor by Lauren Nossett is a highly recommended mystery.

In Athens, Georgia, college student Ethan Haddock is found dead and the media begins to follow the incident. His professor, Dr. Verena Sobek, was taken in for questioning, after which she is suspended from teaching and a Title IX investigation is opened. Disgraced former detective Marlitt Kaplan is now working as a research assistant for her father, a professor. She misses police work and her former partner, but knows she can never return to the force. Her mother, who is also a professor at the university, is a colleague of Verena Sobek and asks for Marlitt's help in clearing Verena's name. Marlitt agrees, although questioning people when you have no authority or inside access to information is challenging.

Told through several different points-of-view, the very slow start made it difficult to engage with the narrative right from the start. It is not until later in the novel that the action picks up and the plot becomes more compelling. A critical incident in Marlitt's background is hinted at but I didn't realize The Professor was second in a series. The first novel, The Resemblance, is about the incident in Marlitt's life that preceded this novel and apparently provides some vital background information.

It is very well-written and once the action takes off, the novel improves. If you can power through the first part things get better, as in more compelling. Expect twists and surprises along with a good dose of criticism over academia's treatment of staff and students. Also expect a few incidents that require a good dose of suspension of disbelief as they strain credibility. 3.5 rounded up.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Flatiron Books via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Edelweiss, X, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

WOW! I am now a devoted Lauren Nossett fan. Read The Resemblance out of curiosity as a native Athenian and really enjoyed the novel and character Marlitt. But The Professor impressed me on another level. The twists and turns! Nossett has done a great job with character development in this cast, original story lines and unique outcomes. And of course, I love the Athens Easter eggs for added fun!