If Dark Academia and Gothic romance had a dangerously attractive love child, it would be Nocticadia. This book lured me in with haunted universities, a murder mystery, a mysterious illness, midnight anatomy labs, forbidden romance, and lots of creepy vibes…….Naturally, I had absolutely no choice but to read it. 💁♀️
The story is set around a university that is situated on a secluded island where the dead supposedly teach the living (sounds awesome, right?). Nocticadia delivered eerie mysteries, academic obsessions, morally gray characters, and an addictive romance. If you love atmospheric books packed with dark secrets, gothic aesthetics, and a professor who somehow manages to be both terrifying and intriguing, keep reading……because I will tell you everything Nocticadia gets right.
Blurb
A dark, atmospheric tale of deadly secrets and forbidden love.
Mortui vivos docent.
The dead teach the living.
After watching my mother succumb to a mysterious illness, I promised myself two things. I’d find the cure for what ravaged her. And leave the godforsaken city where she abandoned me.
Four years later, I receive an acceptance letter from Dracadia University, one of the oldest, most prestigious schools in the country. Nestled on a secluded island off the coast of Maine, it’s rumored to be haunted by the souls of the mental patients exiled there centuries before. Those whose bones are said to make up the island’s white sandy shores.
And restless ghosts aren’t even its most daunting peculiarity.
Devryck Bramwell, known on campus as Doctor Death, is a brilliant pathologist in charge of the midnight lab. He’s also my devastatingly handsome professor, who seems to loathe tenacious first-years like me. Except, his dark and enigmatic gaze tells me all the ways he’d devour me if given the chance, and his stolen kisses burn my lips with forbidden jealousy.
I crave his authority.
He aches for redemption.
Together, we’re toxic. Delicious fodder for the prying eyes hellbent on exhuming the rotted skeletons of our pasts.
For the dead have much to teach, and it’s only a matter of time before Dracadia’s most depraved secret is resurrected.
Nocticadia is a standalone dark academia gothic romance.
Genre
Gothic Fantasy
Theme and Tone
Dark, Atmospheric, Mysterious
Language/Writing Style
Easy to Read
Characters
Morally Gray Complex Characters
Tropes
- Age-gap
- Slow-Burn
- Professor x Student
- Murder Mystery
- Scientific Experiments
- Dark Academia
- Gothic Romance
- Mysteries and Secrets
- Dark Romance
My Review
This book had an atmospheric vibe. I loved that dark, mysterious aura surrounding the whole story. The book starts with that eerie scene that gripped my attention, and I immediately got hooked. There is a secret school conducting secret biomedical research to cure a secret disease. Yeah…..intriguing enough for ya?
Our beloved FMC Lilia Vespertine writes a paper on that secret disease, which acts as a ticket, and she gets accepted to Dracadia (the Mysterious university on a mysterious Island). She gets to the university, gets the coolest dorm room(it was a normal room, but what is cooler than having your own room in a mysterious gothic Victorian building.. So basically, she had a goal: she was trying to cure this disease that kills her mother. For that, she needed to join the infamous midnight lab of Professor Bramwell. She joins the lab after so much hard work(i.e., blackmail 🤭), and then she stumbles upon decade-old drama revolving around a series of secret experiments her mother was a part of, ancient secret societies, a whole beyond-the-university mysterious island with a mysterious virus, a murder mystery, and a forbidden romance with her professor.
The things that worked for me were all the gothic fantasy aura and murder mystery. I love a good mystery that my brain tries to solve while readinga nd i was solving it until the twist happens and I didn’t see that coming, and I usually see all the twists coming from a mile away, so yeah, that was in my favour too. And after the first twist, there was another and then another until my head was spinning. The story went completely bonkers by the end, but I enjoyed the hell outta it.
Although it says it’s a dark romance, my analysis is that it is not dark at all. Yes, Keri Lake did try to make it a little dark with the obsession themes and gory stuff, but it isn’t dark dark….it’s a good amount of dark. So, I won’t categorize it as dark romance.
My Rating
- Overall: ★★★★★ | 5 Stars
- Plot: ★★★★★| 5 Stars
- Romance: ★★★★★ | 5 Star
- Characters:★★★★★ | 5 Stars
- Pacing: ★★★★★| 5 stars
- Mystery: ★★★★★| 5 star
- Banter: ★★★★★| 5 star
- Ending: ★★★★★| 5 Stars
- Spice Level: 🌶| Level 1
- Book Cover:★★★★★| 5 Stars
The Best Part
- All the mystery around this mysterious illness was very intriguing
- How Lilia blackmails Bramwell to accept her as her lab assistant
- The Slow burn between them was peak
- I was not expecting the plot twist, but it was a nice surprise, and I loved it
On the whole, the story was addictive and worth reading, and I highly recommend it.
