oh how i loved these girls and their hunger for everything: power, friendship, oneselves.
i especially loved jo and her pov, i deeply related to her and her fear of not being enough, for both society, her parents AND her friends. how she loves so deeply and with all her being, so much so that it overwhelms people and she loses herself in the process.
i loved the whole friendgroup, however toxic it may be i wish i experience something like it (minus the death) with the friends i have now.

I stayed up to 2am finishing this because it was such a maddening spiral into oblivion and I absolutely needed to understand how it ended. I cannot stress enough how much I love Mallory's writing and how she writes, especially how she writes grief. there was a section where the grief was so palpable and visceral, I had to stop reading and have a good cry and grieve right alongside the characters for a moment.

this book was outstanding.

dark academia
toxic obsession
witchy bonding
sapphic representations

let's go team boar!!

I did not finish this book. It wasn’t my style of story telling. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for gifting me this arc.

This book was absolutely STUNNING! I am not a brand new Pearson fan but this cemented that I am a permanent one.

i've been putting off writing this review for a while. i don't know, book, if i loved you less i'd be able to talk about you more. listen, i've said it before - mallory writes The Books of my heart. her first book, we ate the dark, felt so familiar that it made me feel seen. voice like a hyacinth made me feel seen because in the dreamy prose i have always loved from mallory, she lovingly described a world that i want for myself so much.

voice like a hyacinth is about a group of girls who love each other in some of the most intimate, beautiful ways imaginable. they're all art students at one of those teeny tiny universities. when i tell you the setting was vibrant, what i really mean is that you can ear the skittering of leaves as we follow characters walking to class. you can see the ivy crawling up old stone buildings. you can feel the chill in the air. and you can feel the warmth emanating from the cozy home that jo shares with her friends.

but it's senior year, a culmination of all the time the five have shared together. and maybe this is the year that they fracture too, jo fears. because now they're being asked to compete against each other and the rest of their class. and for some of the group, those coveted spots mean everything. and so they end up convening in a field, doing a macabre ritual to help them create. and then, when their teacher dies, they begin to wonder if they've bitten off more than they can chew.

hello, this is the dark academia sapphic dream book. i really don't know how to adequately convey how much i love this book. all i can tell you is that this book felt like the word yearn. all i can tell you is that the camaraderie between friends, the blurry lines between fondness and pining, the long, delicious moments between the girls, the intimacy - well. i can't really explain to you how much i love it.

people are going to compare this to the craft and though i don't necessarily think that's incorrect, i think that presents an incomplete description of the love and queer joy that this book is thoroughly imbued with at every level. i love the craft, don't get me wrong, but where that film makes enemies out of women, voice like a hyacinth is so full of love and pure adoration in its celebration of desire, queerness, and girlhood.

not kidding you when i say this is one of my favorite books of all time. read it.

The Voice Like a Hyacinth is the tale of five friends who attend the elite art school Rotham in Indiana. The five friends (Jo, Caroline, Finch, Saz and Amerita) are in their senior year and all vying for the honor of being chosen as the soloist. The soloist is the one chosen art student who gets to do a full art show. The competition is high and so are the stakes. They find a book that has a ancient spell and they opt to try it. The effects of "the spell" on the group are vast and lead to the friends re-evaluating the stakes and just how far they are wiling to go to be the soloist. Also, the book has major " The Craft" vibes as well.

i can't wait for this to be on everyone's dark academia lists next year! there's art students, deeply codependent friendships and bits of horror that'll give you goosebumps. mallory is a amazing when it comes to giving readers a book where friendship is so deeply ingrained into the story it makes you even more invested as a reader. i do wish there was just a biiiiit more horror throughout the book but it was still enjoyable! also, that COVER. GOSH. i'm obsessed.

This luscious novel has all the delightful tropes that we've come to expect from Dark Academia; the close knit friend group, the academic setting, the obsessional devotion to their subject, weather that becomes it's own character, murder. But the overlay of sapphic longing and gorgeous imagery softens the horror into something poetic. You can find beauty in the gore.

The story follows five young women who are painting students at a small exclusive arts college in rural Indiana. Although they have been devoted friends throughout their time together, the pressure of their senior competition gets to them and they call on the occult to help. The drama that unfolds between them is at times deeply heartfelt and other times horrific. All is seen through the main character who is both apart from and entwined within the story.

Art, magic, love and lust, what lengths will one go through to be the best? Fans of Sirens and Muses, The Secret History and If We Were Villains will adore this lyrical and evocative book!

I enjoyed reading Pearson's first novel (We Ate the Dark) earlier this year, so I jumped at the chance to read this ARC.

Set at a remote art school in the middle of Indiana, the story follows a group of five inseparable girlfriends - all painting majors now competing for the top spot as their senior year comes to a close.

Cue occult rituals and some psychological/body horror. This story blends non romantic love, introspection, sapphic romance, and loneliness into a dark and captivating story.

I identified with the main character a lot through her friendships, fears, art, insecurities, partying. This brought back a flood of memories, which helped immerse myself in their lives, knowing their joy/pain.

Pearson's style carries through into this novel, which seems more mature and well paced than her first (but could still pass for YA). There are some spicy scenes, but nothing graphic.

It seems like I can count on her for something queer and creepy. Loved this.

Jo Kozak and her tight-knit group of friends, Caroline, Finch, Amrita, and Saz, are bound by more than just their passion for art. Their connection is a lifeline, a source of inspiration so powerful that when it begins to wane, it drives them to the brink of desperation.

The author brilliantly portrays the fragile balance between creation and destruction as these young women resort to the occult in a misguided attempt to reignite their creative flames.

This novel is a must-read for fans of psychological thrillers and dark fiction. It offers a fresh and chilling perspective on the intersection of art and the occult.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

How far would you go to achieve success? Would you be willing to make sacrifices to reach your goals? Voice Like a Hyacinth by Mallory Pearson drives into this question through Jo and her roommates—Saz, Amrita, Carole—and their friend Finch. They're all in their final year at Rotham, a place where only one art student will get the chance to "Solo" and have their work showcased in galleries. If they don’t get that spot, all their hard work over the past four years might not pay off. Rotham is isolated in the middle of nowhere Indiana, so there’s nothing to distract them except their art.

Pearson’s book is captivating and, yes, spellbinding (pun intended!). She really brings her characters to life with all their quirks and flaws. Jo, the main character, can be pretty irksome at times, especially since she seems to see herself only through the lens of her friends, whom she labels as "my women". On the flip side, Amrita and Finch felt the most genuine and down-to-earth, standing out in contrast to Jo and Caroline. I also wished Saz had more page time—she felt like the most elusive of the group, though she’s still important.

Pearson makes you feel their anxiety, their dread, their deepest darkest fears and insecurities. She makes you want to feel this hunger for success and she brings them it all to life with her vivid imagery and prose: "This room would become an extension of me until the work the two of us produced could transmogrify into something worthy of standing on its own."

Pearson mixes realism with her magical, gothic style, and it really shows through the characters' experiences and the changes they go through. There’s a poignant reflection on how friendships evolve and sometimes drift apart, despite promises to stay connected. Jo's belief that they’d always be friends gets challenged as people grow and change: “We made a pact not to lose ourselves. We promised to find each other in any future. Friends drift apart, my dad liked to remind me. Plans change, and people move on.” It's a reminder that sometimes, despite our best intentions, relationships can grow apart as we change. Overall, this was a highly enjoyable read and I will definitely be reading more of Mallory Pearson in the near future. Mallory - you truly possess a gift of transforming visual art into prose. Oh how I'd wish I could visit a gallery with art so beautifully, detailed and described within this story.

A shoutout to the publisher, 47 North, the author Mallory Pearson, and NetGalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Sapphic dark academia, my love language. Five best friends in a highly competitive art program that decide to play with magic in order to bolster their chances at success. A recipe for heartache.

And heartache, Mallory does deliver. While I had some issues with pacing here and there, the writing was a thing of true beauty. The prose, the plot, the grief, the love; everything was felt so viscerally. I'm so grateful I got to read this and will be thinking of it for a LONG time!

Oh, these young women hurt my heart so much!

They’re ravenous for everything – for success, for love, for belonging, for revenge, and just to feel.

This is The Craft meets Dark Academia meets a Sapphic coming of age and it’s kind of everything.

This gets dark and eerie and is simply filled with such yearning that it becomes a gut punch of a read.

Excellent.

• ARC via Publisher

It was an emotional and Greta story telling.
Combined very great things and made the characters unique.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.


One of my favorite reads of the year by far. I loved the beautiful writing, the incredible attention to detail when describing many of the art pieces, the found family aspect and the subtle horror/thriller elements sprinkled throughout. Overall would recommend this book to any “Art” person & contemporary thriller reader.

4 stars! this book delivered dark academia in a cutthroat art school, and it also had a group of friends who alternated between wanting to kill each other and kill for each other.

in other words, it was an incredibly gripping and fascinating read. i loved the gothic atmosphere and the exploration of art was such an interesting form of characterization. while i do think the main character was somehow blander than all of her friends, i also feel like that's meant to be one of the main facets of her personality.

however, even as someone who avoids horror movies like the plague, i wanted more horror elements throughout the novel. while there were some moments that were horrifying (and the writing was excellent at portraying them), i was expecting more. the ending, especially, was a little underwhelming, and i honestly just wanted to see the situation between the characters spiral even further.

still, i adored this book and would easily recommend it!

(thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the arc!)

A tight-knit group of friends in art school compete for a solo exhibition at the end of their senior year and turn to a dark ritual to improve their work.

I don’t typically read many horror books, but I was drawn to the description about queer friendship, found family, and folklore and a Sappho/Charli xcx epigraph was designed specifically for me! I was expecting more occult elements but the horror leaned psychological and atmospheric.

The real horror for me was how this somehow unearthed so many feelings from my toxic college experience. The codependent friend group, competitiveness, if these are supposed to be the best years of your life are you squandering it being lowkey miserable or is it all downhill from here, your friendships won’t be the same once you graduate, your college bubble and the stress of academia are the only thing that matters and the success of your senior thesis will define you, needing to get out but also being terrified for what’s next and how to be your own person.

SO I can’t say reading this was an entirely enjoyable experience but it did evoke a very specific feeling. Jo didn’t feel fully developed or memorable as an individual character but it feels intentional because she mostly defines herself in the context of the friend group, and the descriptions of their interactions were so painstaking and visceral. Some of my favorite scenes were the visit to the Art Institute/critiques because the way the author writes about art is beautiful!!

For fans of: We Ride Upon Sticks, Foxfire (1996), THAT scene in Chlorine, and ofc The Craft (1996)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

Five sapphic art students are bffs4ever. They also all want to be the one chosen for the prestigious solo exhibition at the end of their senior year. All are struggling creatively, and they decide to try a dark magic ritual to boost their creativity while also punishing one of their creepy professors. This can't possibly go wrong!

At first I thought this was a little overwritten and had a hard time with the pretension of art and academia, but around the halfway point I became rabid for this book, the descriptions of the artwork, the relationship being torn apart, the growing dread. Is there any room for love and friendship in a competition? The real horror in life is what we do to ourselves and our loved ones.

I feel like a central theme of this book (besides the pressures of academia) was toxic friendship. Because of that, I was a little disappointed by the climactic scene. I wanted more of the friendships to be twisted when it was really just the one, and I felt cheated by that somehow. I also very much wanted Jo to learn how to be a complete person on her own but it doesn't seem like she's capable of that.

Dark academia enthusiasts rejoice: you will love the occult vibes, hyper-competitive artistic environment, and lush writing of this upcoming release.

It follows a group of five young women attending an art school who perform a frightening ritual in order to give themselves a competitive edge in their school’s senior-year competition. The character relationships and importance of chosen family are really great, and I absolutely couldn’t put it down once I picked it up; it had a perfect mix of daily detail and Big Plot Events, a really good pace, and a compelling plot.

There’s a not-insignificant amount of critique of academia as a structure built into the story, but I do wish that some of that critique had been taken just a little further in the book, to really ground it fully in what I think of as the genre (rather than the aesthetic) of dark academia.

This is a Jan 2025 release ... but I’d definitely look out for it then!

We follow Jo, and her best friends, who are all art students. Jo is our protagonist - we learn the story from her perspective.

These women inspire each other, stick together and go extra lengths for their art.
They even follow an occult ritual and this is when things start to go bizarre.
I absolutely adored the art crosses cult setting.

Plot, characterisation, twist 3/5
Prose 3/5
Mood 3/5
Horror mood 2/5
Gore (the effective use of it) 3.5/5


The themes of art (the making of art and the descriptions of art pieces) 4.5/5