An Academy for Liars
By Sioph W. Leal
An Academy For Liars begins with Lennon Carter's life in turmoil until she receives a mysterious call to Drayton College, a secret magic school in Savannah. She is chosen due to her innate gift of persuasion, which allows her to control others and matter itself. After passing the exam, Lennon must learn to master this powerful ability. Despite the challenges, she is captivated by her studies, Drayton's campus, her classmates, and Dante, the charismatic adviser. As she becomes more adept at wielding her abilities, she uncovers the tragic history of Drayton and Dante, leading her to question her ability to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption and darkness.
The start of An Academy For Liars starts off promising. It has the dark, gothic aspects that’s expected from a dark academia novel. The mystery of Drayton College and Lennon’s chance to interview will have you intrigued, hanging onto the mystery, but this excitement is short-lived. Rather than the excitement of figuring out the mysteries of Drayton College, as you progress through the book, you will be left feeling as if there was no clear plot structure. It’s a shame, as Alexis Henderson isn’t a bad writer; there just seemed to lack focus and direction with An Academy For Lairs.
As the main character, Lennon’s life is a bit of a mess prior to arriving at Drayton. Plagued with her own mental health issues and her struggling within this new world, there isn’t much else to this female lead. Lennon is suddenly the key to the survival of the school, with no real information about how she progressed throughout the book. Lennon often prioritises her crush and the forbidden romance with her advisor Dante, but that is the only relationship she puts any real time in. Dante is the mystery man of the book, and when he is first introduced, he is intriguing and one of the bigger draws of the novel, but Lennon’s fascination and the unnecessary, excessive plots that appear to be thrown in at the last minute have no real impact on the plot.
The romantic relationship between Lennon and Dante does a lot to hinder the book’s enjoyment. Rather than delving into the dark academia plots, Henderson makes the forbidden student-teacher relationship the focus and dynamic of the plots (and there are many) that does nothing to engage the reader. There is no chemistry between the characters; instead, Lennon often comes across like a teenage girl experiencing her first crush, while Dante spends most of the novel either avoiding her or keeping Lennon at arm’s length. When things come to a quick and sudden head and the two spend the night together, there is nothing that draws you into their romance, and yet after they are together, that's how Lennon draws her strength.
The lack of chemistry, or any sort of dynamic, between Lennon and any other character could be put down to the fact that Henderson is fond of time skips and incredibly short chapters. Getting to chapter 50, you would feel as if there had been some direction with the storytelling, but whenever something intriguing happens, Henderson ends the short chapter (some are even four pages long) and begins the next with a time skip. Having this repeatedly happen had me second-guessing if I had missed essential parts of the story, but no, these are just explained within the time skip. This stops the reader from fully indulging into the mysterious world of Drayton College and the complex moral questions that should have been the focus of the novel, not the romantic dynamics of a student and her teacher.
An Academy for Liars lacks a clear plot structure, similar to Lennon’s own characterisation. The novel's focus on the forbidden student-teacher relationship with advisor Dante and the lack of chemistry between Lennon and other characters hinders the reader's enjoyment. The novel's excessive plots and time skips, along with the romantic dynamics between Lennon and her teacher, impede the reader's immersion into the mysterious world of Drayton College.
An Academy for Liars releases on October 24th, 2024.