by Keri Lake
First published 2025
After her mother dies from a mysterious illness, our narrator receives acceptance to Dracadia University, an ancient institution on a secluded Maine island. The campus sits where a mental asylum once stood, built on shores made of patient bones. She encounters Devryck Bramwell, nicknamed Doctor Death, a brilliant pathologist who runs the midnight lab. Despite his apparent disdain for eager first-year students, his dark gaze reveals hunger, and his stolen kisses ignite forbidden desire. She craves his dominance while he seeks redemption. Their toxic attraction draws scrutiny from those eager to expose buried secrets. The narrator pursues her original goals: finding a cure for the disease that killed her mother and escaping her past. But Dracadia harbors its own sinister mysteries, and the dead have lessons to teach the living.
Genres: romance, mystery, horror, supernatural, dark-fantasy, gothic-horror, academia, dark-academia
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forbidden-romance, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Dracadia University, Maine
Period: Contemporary
597 pages · Hardcover · Bloom Books
Content warnings: death, mental-illness, violence