The Last Graduate: A Novel | 
pickPicture at a weird angle to show off those sprayed edges! 😁
I LOVED this!!! El is just an amazing MC and Novik does a fantastic job developing and maturing her character throughout the story. I loved every single side character, including the school. I'm so glad I waited until all three books were out before reading this though - that ending!!! I'm jumping straight into The Golden Enclaves!!
I saw this while looking up fan art. El seriously cracks me up sometimes, she‘s so me. Like imagine having magic, but you had to fold laundry or do push ups just to access it… I‘ll do it but I‘m going to complain the entire time! 😂😂
pickThe squad 👯♀️👯♀️ I love them so much! Liu and Aad got me tearing up 🥲
pickOh my lanta.. This was significantly better than the first book for me. Everything I loved about ADE is amped up in the sequel. The stakes get higher and the relationships get deeper the closer everyone gets to graduation. I liked El even more- she‘s extremely relatable no matter how snarky she can be. This is a slow burner with an extremely satisfying climax and one hell of a cliffhanger. Have the third book ready! 4.5/5
pickHoly crap, people. What an absolute BURNER of a book. I‘m literally breathless from the finish, which also happened to be a huge a horrific cliffhanger & I am SO GLAD that the third book is already out. Everything wonderful about the first book — the world building, the characters, the action, the plotting — was just magnified tenfold and thrown at the reader to keep up with. I loved it & absolutely rec this series for fantasy lovers of all kinds.
Picking up the second in the Scholomance series for my next read. Really looking forward to seeing how senior year treats El…
pickThank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
I really enjoyed book 1 in this series and the voice in this is the same, really distinctive and different from Noviks‘s other books. Huge long sentences without taking a breath and lots of diversions mid-point. It takes a bit to get used to, but if you‘ve read book 1 (and you do need to start there) then it works.
Plot wise I was sort of unsure what was going on till about 60% and then I really got hooked.
pickGaladriel and her new friends have managed to survive their lower years at their deadly wizarding school and are now seniors. Their final year is the toughest yet, requiring intense preparation for graduation and escaping monsters hellbent on killing them. Will they make it out?
pickORION
I love how Novik keeps up a rollicking pace and manages to make me care so deeply about these characters while also feeding me a huge amount of information about the world and keeping them very realistic teenagers. Amazingly realistic considering El is a budding supervillain and Orion is pretty much a superhero!
so-soBook 2 of Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy was just okay for me. I want to learn more about the main character and the dire prophesy and I still want to know what her mom has against Orion Lake. But, the never-ending fighting was nothing short of tiresome to read about. If I had been reading rather than listening I might have bailed. I do have book 3 on hold, but I'm giving myself permission to DNF it if I'm not loving it.
pickContinuing the re-read, this second book in the trilogy takes everything I love and gives me more. More world development, more character finding their place. Our narrator is more capable and the world gets more complicated to match, without undoing or undercutting any of the growth that's happened so far.
pickSpent the weekend in a quiet cabin and caught up on my reading🥰 this series is cruising right along and I‘m glad that the third one is out so I can go pick it up and finish the story! The author has a knack for cliffhangers and I‘m looking forward to what she has in store for El, Orion, and the rest of the Schoolmamce
Enjoying my reread of the tagged book on this chilly evening in preparation for finally reading The Golden Enclaves!
pickThis book is the second book in the Scholomance series. I personally really like this book, and the whole series, I've already read this book before. So where I am in the book is that they just started doing practice runs in the gym, splitting it into four language groups, a Spanish run, a Hindi run, a Chinese run, and an English run. People are going to the English run, but not many are going to the others. Aadya is talking to her about revisers.
pickPhew, the sequel had even more action and excitement! The characters all grew on me, and I really liked many side characters too. Now I just have to figure out how to get book 3 as soon as possible.
#TheScholomance #NaomiNovik
pickAs El‘s senior year kicks off, it seems like the Scholomance is dead set on her not staying alive until graduation.
As her alliance with Aadhya & Liu grows stronger and her relationship with Orion becomes more complicated, El is forced to realize the Scholomance isn‘t trying to kill her. It has a special task for her.
Finished 1/5/2022
pickCome ONNNN Naomi with your cliffhangers! This one would have pockets of drag for me, but it didn‘t take away from the story, just made for inconsistent pacing. She does a great job making your body have the perfect reactions to what is occurring and since you have bonded with the characters, it makes it that much better. Still recouping from the heart pounding rush. Looking forward to the final book!
pickThis was SO GOOD. Not just for a second-in-series, but in general. Novik‘s usual stellar writing, fantastic characters that have just continued developing from the first book, a nonstop action-packed story, and monsters, monsters, monsters.
I am extremely happy that I waited until the 3rd and final book was out because that ending was just a mean, cruel cliffhanger, and that took a star off my review. 😂
Really great on audio, too.❤️
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
pickThat ending was insane! Now I have to read the third book. Well played. If you like monsters and magic, you'll probably have a good time with this. It is very creative, angsty, and action packed.
pickReread via Libro.fm audiobook before The Golden Enclaves releases! Since my first read, The Last Graduate won the Lodestar Award for YA lit at the Hugos 🥳 Anisha Dadia is just a fantastic narrator and I love her as El, so if you‘re considering the audio, I highly recommend it!
so-soI just didn‘t love it and there is so much to like about this book (and series)—fantastic premise, interesting characters, great worldbuilding, good writing and yet, I don‘t love the way in which Novik, whose Uprooted is one of my favorite books, is telling the story. Somehow it just doesn‘t work and I found myself skimming quite a few pages in the middle. I‘ll keep reading for all the reasons listed above & just hope the telling gets better.
I‘ve had this book on my shelf…well, ever since it came out. 😬 Just haven‘t gotten to it but having just accomplished the rare and remarkable feat of winning the Hugo—as a middle book in a trilogy!!!—and with the final book in the trilogy coming out next week, I think now is the right time to start reading it.
pick📩 July 13th, 2022
Yessss! Just the 2nd book of the series that I needed :)
I think I literally devoured the book and would literally spend every free moment wanting to know what happened next! I saw coming the end of the book, but it still surprised me while reading it.
My librarian told me the third comes out in September… I can't wait!!
pickBook two in The Scholomance series. This was really enjoyable although I did find some of the interior monologue got repetitive in the middle. This was made up for by so many monsters (!!) and a really good depiction of how group dynamics shift and change. I‘m really looking forward to Book 3. If you liked Gideon the Ninth you might like this series - slightly softer on the scary bits and more YA though.
#AlphabetGame @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
#LetterL
My favorite "A" book is The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
There are a few others worth mentioning:
The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths
These books cover a lot of different genres.
pickI also absolutely loved this book, like the first one! The ending surprised me (but it wasn‘t unpredictable), and I can‘t wait to read the next one. I believe the story could wrap up nicely in the third book, while also offering a few twists to keep us entertained. We‘ll see!
Currently reading courtesy of my local library! 🥰
pickWaiting for Novik to write something that isn‘t practically flawless! Second books in a series are always tough, but this one nailed it. It went in an unexpected but wholly satisfying direction (until that last paragraph - GAHHH 😩). Recommend this for anyone who enjoys a dark, introspective fantasy that pulls no punches, emotionally or otherwise. Really going to struggle with the wait until September for the last installment!
Loving this book but know it‘s going to absolutely destroy me at the end. Finally warm enough to be back outside at my very favorite reading spot 😎🍇🍷 #vineyardreads
pickI don‘t even know where to start. I‘ll start off with this: I AM NOT OKAY. Now that that‘s settled, I really loved the entirety of this book (though the ending was cruel) and loved reading the interactions between the characters. I highly recommend this book to everyone though I warn you: you‘re probably not ready for this.
5⭐️
Each one of them was a story whose unhappy ending hadn‘t been written yet, and in its place I‘d inscribed one line with my own hand: And then they graduated from the Scholomance.
“I know it‘s not fair, El. But I just need to know. I never had a plan except to go home and kill mals. I never wanted anything else. But now I do. I want you. I want to be with you. I don‘t care if it‘s in New York or Wales or anywhere else. And I just need to know if that‘s okay. If I can—if I can have that. If you want that, too.”
“There‘s no such thing as normal people,” I said, a desperate flailing. “There‘s just people, and some of them are miserable, and some of them are happy, and you‘ve the same right to be happy as any of them—no more and no less.”
“El, I know you don‘t want to talk about—if we make it out of here, but I can‘t—“ and his voice was cracking on the edge of tears, not just leaky sentiment but like he was barely holding on to keep from bursting into sobs, so I couldn‘t stop him, and because I didn‘t, he said, “You‘re the only right thing I‘ve ever wanted.”
It was only fair, after all: if I was making them jump through all these hoops, just so I could be a hero, I had to be a bloody proper one, didn‘t I?
“I didn‘t get to have my sister, so I got you.”
[…]
“If you‘re who I get instead of my sister—I can‘t just leave you behind and still be a person.” She looked up then, and it turned out she was also crying, tears trickling down her face and just starting to drip off her chin, even though her voice didn‘t sound any different. “I‘m not leaving you behind.”
Everyone else would have taken it, not because it helped the gaping wound in their side, but because when you had nothing, you took what you could get.
“That‘s crazy. What are you going to do? Save everyone? You can‘t save everyone. Not even you and Lake.”
“Watch me.”
You couldn‘t learn how to get back on your feet until after you‘d been knocked down.
“To be fair, you‘re the only person I‘ve ever met who‘d come up with the idea of being wildly rude and hostile to the guy who saved your life like twenty times,” Aadhya said.
I glared at her. “Thirteen times! And I‘ve saved his life at least twice.”
“Catch up already, girl.”
“They‘re freaked out over Orion.”
“After you‘ve only been dating two months?” Liu said.
“We‘re not dating!”
Aadhya made a dramatic show of rolling her eyes heavenwards. “After you‘ve been doing whatever you‘re doing that is not dating but totally looks like dating to everyone else, for only two months.”
It was the miracle all over again, the miracle I still couldn‘t quite believe in: I wasn‘t alone anymore. They were saving me, and I was going to save them. It felt more like magic than magic. As though it could make everything all right. As if the whole world had become a different place.
so-soBook 17
I listened to The Last Graduate, the second novel in the series. The first half reads like the protagonist is talking at the reader instead of having the storyline unfold. The pacing improves, but the book isn't as exciting as book one. ⭐⭐⭐
pickWell, now I‘m just mad. 😅
I‘m mad that this ended on such a cliffhanger. And I‘m mad at myself for finishing it 7 months before the next book comes out.
I recently saw this series described as Harry Potter meets The Hunger Games. While I‘d tweak that description slightly to say that it‘s more like The Magicians (by Lev Grossman) meets The Hunger Games (this one specifically equates to Catching Fire), it‘s pretty accurate.
Throughly enjoyable.
#BacklistReadathon @Clwojick
#ISpyBingo
#52BookClub24 - Abrupt Ending
#FourFoursin24 - Krampus Campus @lauredhel
#GottaCatchEmAll - Positive Change (Wheezing), Magic (Ponyta) @PuddleJumper
#BookSpinBingo 3mo