Author: Keshe Chow
Genre: Fantasy, Romantasy, Dark Academia
Format: Audiobook ALC
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐✨ (3.5★)
Synopsis
Gwendolynne Chan is determined to finish her final year at Seamere College of Magical Veterinary Sciences at the top of her class, as long as her academic rival Harrisford Briggs doesn’t beat her to it first.
But when dangerous magical surges begin causing familiars to go feral and chaos spreads across London, Gwen and Harris are forced into an uneasy alliance to uncover what’s really happening behind the scenes.
As corruption, magical instability and buried secrets begin surfacing, the two rivals must work together before the entire magical world spirals out of control.
My Thoughts
This one hurts a bit to rate, because the IDEA of this book? Honestly... incredible.
Veterinary magic, familiars, magical academia… this should have been a guaranteed obsession for me. I adore these 3 topics and they are in my TOP 10 Favorite Things Ever.
And to be fair, the story starts really strong. The setup is interesting, the premise immediately grabs attention and I was fully ready to fall in love with this world.
But unfortunately, the pacing really held this one back for me.
This is a long audiobook, almost 15 hours, and I kept waiting for that moment where the story would fully hook me and never let go. It just never completely happened.
We follow Gwen and Harris, academic rivals for the past seven years, who reluctantly team up after a series of strange magical incidents. A gala erupts in flames, familiars suddenly turn feral, and it becomes increasingly obvious that something much bigger is happening beneath the surface, even if the authorities are trying to dismiss it all.
The mystery itself was interesting. There are magical politics, suspicious corporations, dangerous surges of excess magic and plenty of investigation throughout the story.
And then there’s the romance.
Very slow burn.
Sometimes painfully slow burn.
I usually listen to audiobooks at 1.5x or 1.75x speed, but with this one I eventually had to move up to 2x just to stay focused.
The romance itself also didn’t fully work for me emotionally. Even though Gwen and Harris slowly start opening up to each other, it never felt like they truly built a strong foundation before the romantic tension started escalating. For most of the book, they still seemed stuck in the “are you trying to sabotage me?” mindset because of their rivalry and competition for the same future job.
Honestly… just when I finally started getting invested in the romance, the Twilight references completely pulled me out of the moment :/
That said, Harris surprisingly ended up becoming one of my favorite parts of the story. He starts off as privileged and frustrating, but over time he becomes more self-aware and genuinely grows as a character.
And Percy the cat familiar? An absolute menace. But a lovable one.
I also really want to praise the audiobook narrators, Mei Mei MacLeod and Sam Stafford. They both did a fantastic job bringing the story and characters to life, and honestly, I think the audiobook format helped keep me engaged through some of the slower sections.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I really wanted to love this more than I actually did.
The ideas behind the story are genuinely fantastic, and some elements worked really well for me, especially the magical veterinary angle and the familiars. I just wish the pacing had been tighter and the emotional payoff stronger.
Still… despite my frustrations, I absolutely plan to continue the series because I’m genuinely curious to see where the story goes next.
ARC Disclaimer
Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton Audio for the ALC. All opinions are my own.
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