#all that consumes us

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Characters, book, and author names under the cut

Tara Boone/Penny - All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters

August Mulvaney/Lucas Blackwell - Psycho by Onley James

Ariadne O'Neill/Elena Quesada-Cruz/Chikondi Daka/Jack Vo - To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers (sorry hit the character limit which cut off the name in the poll)

Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish - The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

JOMP BPC - February 4th - Cover Lust

it must be nice to keep winning the cover lottery the way Erica Waters does 😂

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

A little detail from All That Consumes Us that I keep thinking about is how it plays with the trope of the Improbably Diverse Cast - which, to be clear, is not a trope that bothers me, but every once in a while it can be blatant enough to knock me out of the fiction for just a moment. Like, okay, there's only one cishet white guy in this old money ivy league type secret society? I'll roll with it, but I have noticed. The thing that All That Consumes Us does that I really liked was when the knives came out and the horror was exposed one of the main characters went "oh shit, they picked us because we have shaky support systems and limited opportunities and they could use that to make us dependent on them." And I just always get a little bit of satisfaction when a story has a good diegetic reason to back up a kind of tropey premise.

[bones-clouds]

books i read in 2024:

"all that consumes us"

erica waters

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, 5

genre: horror/thriller, gothic, dark academia, wlw

synopsis:

Ninth House meets The Dead and the Dark in this gothic dark academia novel that delves into the human capacity for great love, great art, and great evil. Magni animi numquam moriuntur. Great minds never die.

The students in Corbin College’s elite academic society, Magni Viri, have it all—free tuition, inspirational professors, and dream jobs once they graduate. When first-gen college student Tara is offered a chance to enroll, she doesn’t hesitate.? Except once she’s settled into the gorgeous Victorian dormitory, something strange starts to happen. She’s finally writing, but her stories are dark and twisted. Her dreams feel as if they could bury her alive. An unseen presence seems to stalk her through the halls. And a chilling secret awaits Tara at the heart of Magni Viri—one that just might turn her nightmares into reality; one that might destroy her before she has a chance to escape.

All That Consumes Us will pull readers into a hypnotizing, dark reverie that blurs the lines of reality and shows that the addictive nature of ambition—and its inevitable price—always claims its due.

[aroaessidhe]

read in 2023: ghosts

The Immeasurable Depth of You

All That Consumes Us

The Spirit Bears Its Teeth

Saint Death’s Daughter

Sixteen Souls

Painted Devils

Radiant

He Who Drowned The World

She Is A Haunting

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: Queer Dark Academia

For even more recs for dark academia fans, check out this post of Queer YA for Dark Academia Lovers. (Shopping links are affiliate; using them earns a small percentage of income for the site.) Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven (Bks) All That Consumes Us by Erica Waters (Bks) Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo (Bks) The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton (Bks) These Violent Delights by…

[starrlikesbooks]

Are you ready for queer found family in a creepy secret society? 👻📚

This is out October 17th! And available for preorder ✨

[combativewizard]

"I wonder what it would be like to wake up every day like this, in a small, homey life; to have a normal job and hobbies and never think about college again. To forget about greatness. To forget about achievement. To choose smaller dreams"

-Erica Waters

[bugonmywindow]

- All That Consumes Us

[the-final-sentence]

I have a book of my own to write.

Erica Waters, from All That Consumes Us

[oracleofmadness]

This is the perfect read for October. A mysterious dark academia read that completely held my attention the whole way through.

Tara, the main character, is ready to give up hope at Corbin University, where she attends hoping to one day be an author. Suddenly, she is inducted to a secret society, Magni Viri, which is known for the brilliance of its students. She is elated. That is, until she realizes what is actually happening here.

I loved this! It is a gothic ghost story that I definitely recommend for a good autumn read!

Out October 17, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!

[authorunpublished]

Book Review: All That Consumes Us

Title: All That Consumes Us Author: Erica Waters Genre: Young Adult, Horror, Fantasy, Paranormal, Gothic, LGBTQ+ Rating: 5 Stars Description/Synopsis: The students in Corbin College’s elite academic society, Magni Viri, have it all—free tuition, inspirational professors, and dream jobs once they graduate. When first-gen college student Tara is offered a chance to enroll, she doesn’t hesitate.? …

[ianthe-is-a-bitch-and-i-love-her]

This past year I've really been falling in love with gothic horror, and All That Consumes Us has made that definitive. The prose is heavy with cloying dread, Tara's internal monologue spirals on itself as her lonely, desperate anger denies her clarity and makes her vulnerable to the sinister rot creeping over her life. The moments of joy and clarity feel bright and fleeting and fragile and beautiful, and the hurt that follows feels so poignant and true. The subtext and metaphor underlying the story and its rarified college setting are quite effective and salient, and if it's heavy-handed in some places, it's quite deft in others. The horror is grounded in fear, in loneliness, and in the deep-seated self-worth issues that plague so many of us. I definitely recommend it

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 2/5

Book Blurb: Ninth House meets The Dead and the Dark in this gothic dark academia novel that delves into the human capacity for great love, great art, and great evil. 

Magni animi numquam moriuntur. Great minds never die. 

The students in Corbin College’s elite academic society, Magni Viri, have it all—free tuition, inspirational professors, and dream jobs once they graduate. When first-gen college student Tara is offered a chance to enroll, she doesn’t hesitate.

Except once she’s settled into the gorgeous Victorian dormitory, something strange starts to happen. She’s finally writing, but her stories are dark and twisted. Her dreams feel as if they could bury her alive. An unseen presence seems to stalk her through the halls.  

And a chilling secret awaits Tara at the heart of Magni Viri—one that just might turn her nightmares into reality; one that might destroy her before she has a chance to escape. 

All That Consumes Us will pull readers into a hypnotizing, dark reverie that blurs the lines of reality and shows that the addictive nature of ambition—and its inevitable price—always claims its due. 

Review:

Magni animi numquam moriuntur. Great minds never die. A girl who is an outsider finds herself joining an exclusive society but begins seeing the ghost and feels herself losing time while being possessed by someone, the question is who. Tara goes to Corbin College, and dreams about being accepted into the elite academic society, Magni Viri and get a chance to experience free tuition, inspirational professors and the dream job when she graduates. When she finds the dead body of a girl who was part of the Magni Viri society, a girl that she envied and wish she could be, the last thing she expects is to be invited into the society to replace said girl. Yet once she is there her writing is suddenly better and she feels as if she's losing herself, literally, as she begins losing time and her writing is no longer her own and that someone is possessing her while she feels like she is being haunted by the dead girl she replaced. Can she figure out what is happening in this secret society before it's too late? This book was driving me crazy because I recognized the plot and couldn't place it and then realized it was literally Down A Dark Hall by Lois Duncan (and there was a film version too). Unfortunately this one missed the mark for me, it had a nice dark academia/gothic mystery with a sapphic romance in it too however it just felt kind of lacking and since I already knew where the plot was going I wasn't exactly surprised. The story felt kind of slow and I was hoping for something more but that's just me. I feel like if I didn't already know Down a Dark Hall, I would have enjoyed this more. If you enjoy dark academia/gothic mysteries with a bit of a haunting and a tiny bit of romance give this a go!

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, HarperTeen for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads / storygraph

All That Consumes Us

YA dark academia

about a writer struggling in her first semester at uni when she finds a girl who was in the secretive and prestigious academic society dead in the library, and is offered the newly empty place

she gladly accepts the spot (and free tuition), but is haunted by dreams of the dead girl, and her stories seem to be going strange and dark places

explores the cost of artistic ambition

bi MC, sapphic, lots of queer characters

[elliepassmore]

All That Consumes Us release!

Everyone knows the students in Corbin College’s elite academic society, Magni Viri, have it all—free tuition, inspirational professors, and dream jobs once they graduate. So when Tara is offered a chance to enroll, she takes it. But once she’s settled into the gorgeous Victorian dormitory the academy calls home, something strange starts to happen. She finally has the chance to write, but her stories are dark and twisted. When she’s not sleepwalking, she’s dreaming about being trapped in a coffin, buried alive. And she’s starting to feel an unseen presence stalking her through the halls of her dorm. As Tara slowly loses her grip on everything she’s ever known, she discovers a terrible secret at the heart of Magni Viri, one that just might turn her dreams into nightmares, one that might destroy her before she has a chance to escape.

Bookshop.org

Barnes & Noble

This is the perfect dark academia book for October. It’s got the foggy college campus, the academic sorta-secret fraternity/sorority, and the dedicated-bordering-on-dangerously-obsessive students. It ticks all the right boxes for a nice spooky read.

The cast is also very diverse, with a range of racial, sexual, and gender identities, as well as characters who are disabled. Dark academia tends to have an issue with representation, in a way that reflects the exclusivity higher education can have and has historically had for marginalized groups. Waters removes those barriers for the characters while also reflecting on and addressing those barriers.

For a more in-depth opinion, check out my review here!