Nocticadia by Keri Lake
on April 25, 2023
Genres: Romance
Pages: 682
Format: ebook
Source: Kindle Unlimited
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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.

my thoughts:

Before reading Nocticadia, please check trigger warnings.

Nocticadia was my first Keri Lake novel and while I didn’t fully love it, I’m intrigued enough to check out more of her work. The writing was gorgeous, the setting was atmospheric, and the romance was steamy. However, it had it’s flaws.

The beginning of the novel dragged. In fact, a good portion of the novel dragged. If you’re going to write a 682 page story, you need to captivate readers from start to finish and Nocticadia just didn’t do that.

The plot was all over the place and things only came together at the very end. It felt like there was too much going on at times and nothing going on at other times. Not to mention that parts of the story were very predictable. I won’t spoil anything but one of the biggest “twists” was something I’d seen coming from the start.

The dark academia/gothic vibe of this one was perfectly done. I was truly creeped out at times and had trouble figuring out what was real and what might have been Lilia’s imaginings. I also have to warn readers that there are some thoroughly disturbing/disgusting scenes regarding scientific experiments and parasites. It’s not for the faint of heart.

The scientific parts of this story were confusing and that may just be a personal thing (I always struggled with science) but it really took me out of the book. I would find myself being drawn out of the book because I couldn’t understand parts of it. It took a lot of my enjoyment away from this one.

While the spice was hot, it wasn’t as kinky as I’d expected. Devryck makes some comment early on about how he won’t go easy on Lilia but then he does exactly that. He implies a few times that he likes things rougher but that never manifested in the scenes between him and Lilia. It was a bit disappointing.

Overall, Nocticadia held a lot of promise but didn’t quite deliver. I hesitate to recommend any book over 300 pages if it’s not completely amazing and I just can’t recommend this one at over 600 pages. If you’re looking for dark romance, gothic, academia vibes, there are others out there that would be a better use of your time.

if you’d like a better example of gothic/academia vibes, you might like:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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