I read this book a while ago and apologize for the late feedback, I accidentally marked it as a book I had completed feedback for. I was very excited to read this book, but the prose was too dense and slow, making it quite hard to get into. I was hoping for Dark Academia meets "Yellowjackets", but it was perhaps a bit too YA and meandering for me.

However, I'm new to Dark Academia and acknowledge that I might not be the target audience.

Love the sapphic storyline and dark, brooding atmosphere. A bit of editing down, and it would have been very enjoyable.

Many thanks to 47North Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Beautiful horror writing, both compelling and repelling at the same time. The pacing slows way down in the middle and became tedious to get through, I think it needed a little more editing to make it shorter and keep the plot tight. Reminded me a lot of Bunny by Mona Awad in a good way. I loved the art school setting, maybe because it's close to home. I'm not sure what this says about female friendships, we're really in it, aren't we? Anyway, by the time you get to the end, it's a bit of a let down. I would read more from the author but her editor needs to be on her case.

As soon as I finished Voice Like A Hyacinth, I immediately went into a contemplative mode. I truly wondered whether I read this book wrong because it did not seem like neither a horror nor a thriller story. It’s more of a psychological story told by lesbians whose friendship was really weird.

In Voice Like A Hyacinth, we follow the story of passionate art students Jo, Saz, Caroline, Finch, and Amrita who are not only lesbians but also whose friendship is as weird as they come. Perhaps, artists and their relationships are really eccentric. As the story constantly tells us, the girls’ friendship is really strong and how they love and would die for each other. Except for their love of painting, nothing can surpass the girls love for each other. Their passion and love for their craft have led them to resort to some kind of magic that will give them an advantage to be better painters and open an opportunity for them to go Solo (a competition in school wherein the best painter will be able to showcase her paintings publicly). The ritual was a success but as they say, everything has a price in exchange for something so good.

The beginning of the story started really slow what with the elaboration about the girls and their art. I did not enjoy the journey as much because I could not relate to any one of the characters. I am pansexual myself and I am loyal to my friends but I was just not convinced about the Voice Like A Hyacinth’s portrayal of friendship. There was a lot of telling instead of showing. Their friendship kind of weirded me out and their declaration on how they love each other was quite repetitive, it’s tiring and kind of giving me the impression that Pearson is desperate to convince the reader that these five girls are really gungho about each other. Moreover, I find the main POV, Jo, and the girls underdeveloped and interchangeable because it took a lot of willpower to distinguish who’s who. The only interesting person in this story was Professor Kolesnik but right, he’s too interesting that he died. Le sigh.

The promise of horror did not even compensate for the frustration that I have with the characters because no horror happened. It’s all in the head. The story is more about the psychological well being of our cast of characters as they slowly spiralled into madness. The premise promised horror but it’s a different kind of horror that I neither expected nor enjoyed. Similar to how the girls tell the readers of how they love and are crazy for each other, the horror experienced by our main POV, Jo, was also repetitive and instead of getting that nail-biting-so-scared experience, all I got was frustration.

So why did I give this book a 3 star rating? Well, Pearson certainly is talented with words. I like her prose. Whimsy and has that magical quality that made me picture the whole story set in a fairy taleish world. Other than that, I also love how she describes the paintings of the girls. The author certainly know how to describe the paintings with depth and realism. I am not into painting but Pearson has allowed me to enjoy the works of our characters like I’m actually looking at them for real. I definitely learned some things about painting and that is much appreciated.

Just like our characters, Voice Like A Hyacinth has a lot of potential to go solo but in the end, it made choices that didn’t jive with my expectations. Nonetheless, if you are into psychological stories or illustrative arts, then, give this one a go.

what a ride was this ! I loved the dark atmosphere, the beautiful and lyrical prose..and the slow burn was delicious! I felt every emotion and bit of tension and obsession .. it’s accurate to tell that myself am obsessed with this book!

Thank you Netgalley, 47North publishers and Mallory Pearson for the eArc of Voice Like a Hyacinth.

It took me a little while to get into Voice Like a Hyacinth . Mallory has quite a unique writing style that's both haunting and poetic which makes for a slow burn, descriptive narrative. The depth in which Mallory delves with not just the character building but also all the emotions that flow freely between and within this friendship group. Bound by a gothic, occult themes takes this book into some nicely executed twists and I loved how the pace picked up. The ending did fall a little flat for me but overall, a really enjoyable read.

3.5 stars for Storygraph, 4 stars for other review sites

While Voice Like a Hyacinth was a beautifully written, gorgeous told sapphic story… it was just a bit too dark for me. I don’t feel right giving it a negative review at all because it is obviously a wonderful, complex story, I am just not the intended audience. I found it too intense and dark. I believe it will be loved by many and the writing is good so I want to give it a higher rating!

"In Greek mythology, hyacinths are supposed to represent devotion beyond death." Voice Like a Hyacinth, Mallory Pearson.

Wow! Thank you, Mallory Pearson, for this advanced read's copy of Voice Like a Hyacinth via NetGalley.

I knew I was going to love this book after I was so captivated by, We Ate the Dark. I just wasn't prepared for how much.

The beautiful, lyrical words that create this haunting story of intense friendship, love, destruction and competition magically pull the reader into the story as if they are a shadow existing in the same world.

Dark academia, magic realism, sapphic, folklore and horror all wrapped up in a beautiful book.
There are so many avenues and layers to discuss in this book. It is absolutely a book that could be read multiple times. It's also one that I will be thinking about for a long time.

Voice Like a Hyacinth is a moody, slow-burning dive into queerness, obsession, and the strange, intense world of art school. It definitely takes its time getting where it’s going—there were points where I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the end—but I’m really glad I stuck with it. Pearson’s writing is atmospheric and eerie in all the right ways, and there’s a real sense of longing and melancholy that gives the story a lot of emotional weight.

If you're into dark academia with a touch of horror and queer friendships at the center, this is worth a read. Some parts didn’t quite land for me—especially the pacing and how similar the characters felt at times—but the themes of ambition, growing up, and the cost of creativity are handled beautifully. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely memorable. A solid pick for anyone who likes their fiction with a little magic, a little madness, and a lot of feeling.

"Voice Like a Hyacinth" is an atmospheric and eerie exploration of art, obsession, and the consequences of meddling with the unknown. The novel excels in its haunting prose and unsettling tension, but the pacing drags at times, making it difficult to stay fully immersed. A solid read for fans of dark academia, though it doesn’t quite reach its full potential.

An incredible culmination of obsession, friendship, queerness, and growing up.

There is a very real longing and melancholy throughout the novel. Knowing the time you have left in this era of your life is fleeting. Wanting it to stay the same but knowing you can't will time to stop.

There are beautiful themes throughout this novel and I highly recommend spending the time to delve deep into this story.

The last reason to read this book is from the acknowledgements "Finally, to all the queer girls. You're the most important thing in this world. Make art and make magic and love each other beyond words."

I really enjoyed this. I loved the queer relationships and horror aspects of this novel. I liked the prose and how Mallory Pearson wrote the characters.

It’s just very deeply fine, and I couldn’t really get myself invested, so I ended up just abandoning it at about 50%.

A tribute to that fleeting time of endless potential and ambition that seems to be especially potent to college students. Combined with the claustrophobic feeling of feeling like a small cohort of peers and friends are and can be your whole world forever, it really digs into what would you do to have both things be true, to have friends as close as your own soul but also the creative ambition that requires you to climb over them. I think I am not enough of a visual artist to fully appreciate to the depth of its core, but there's enough about the act of creation and pouring your soul into expressing your art that it still resonates.

I do kind of wish it had either been more ambiguous throughout that the ritual was or wasn't real, or had just said it straight out - it tries to pull off both by having it be ambiguous and that creeping psychological horror but then also totally turns on a dime and makes a decision towards the end and it doesn't feel as satisfactory as I'd like.

All in all, a great entry for the queer dark academia shelves

Part The Craft, part dark academia, a tale of hunger and obsession queer a crazy narrator and descent into madness.

A story of five young women entering their senior year at a prestigious arts college. Only one student in the program will be chosen for a solo showcase at the end of the year. They all want it desperately. As the pressure they put on themselves to produce art they deem good enough grows, our girls turn to a ritual to bring them good luck and curse a self important, pervy professor. As always, while it seems to work at first, things soon to fall apart.


Pearson's writing style, which is a bit much. really works here. It shows the hunger and obsession Jo feels to keep her beloved friends close forever and the desire to become a great artist. I love the dynamics of the clique. They're so weirdly enmeshed with each other and it's fascinating. It was a wild ride watching the cracks start to form. I really enjoyed this book.

Voice Like a Hyacinth by Mallory Pearson was unsettling and tense. I really enjoyed reading this novel.
A gripping dark academia sapphic novel that was so compelling I was hooked till the end.

This book had been on my radar so I was very excited by this one and I was immediately drawn into the darkness and danger, great read overall.

I was highly anticipating this novel, mostly because the cover is beautiful and I like to keep up with new horror releases! But unfortunately, this fell super flat for me. I did enjoy that the horror Went There, since that's one of my biggest pet peeves in horror, when authors are afraid to make things dark. My biggest complaint is that all the characters were more or less the same person with a few different personality traits, but none of it was enough for me to distinguish them from one another. The ritual and folklore aspects were super interesting but I wish they were more flushed out, considering how long this book was, I feel like we only got glimpses of what it could be. Overall, I enjoyed the writing a lot (enough to be more interested in reading more from this author) but this felt like a middleground horror novel for me.

Feeling like a blend of The Craft and dark academia, Mallory Pearson’s Voice Like A Hyacinth grips from the get-go, and doesn’t let go. Part coming of age story, part occult nightmare, it’s a tale of young co-dependent friendships (we all had them) and dabbling in the dark arts (we all did it… right?).

The novel is perhaps a tad overwritten and a few pages too long, and while the epilogue was pleasant in its (still slightly spooky) softness, the bleakness of the actual finale felt more fitting for the genre. That said, it positively drips with Gothic ephemera, from the pathetic fallacy of the locations and the weather to the heavy focus on art and the tortured artist. The scares are great too, a blend of the supernatural and the psychological, increasing in intensity with every page turn. And there’s even room for a brief tear in the eye.

As rich with delicious writing as it is with encroaching dread, Voice Like A Hyacinth really does deliver on its blurb’s promises. It feels far too early in the year to have found my book of 2025, but Voice Like A Hyacinth is going to put up a hell of a fight.

“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.

never look me in the eyes and tell me you didnt like this book…what a novel im about to swan dive no word of a LIE i need this injected into my vains asap.