Hellebore is a school for those who have world ending type powers who need to learn to control them. Unfortunately, not everyone who attends is there voluntarily, and our main character Alessa Li is one of those people.
I am a bit torn on my opinion of this book. The opening line of the book immediately caught my attention, and while I didn’t have trouble staying engaged in the story, it was more because I was trying to figure out what was going on, than it was about the story itself.
First let me say, if you are not into gruesome, and at times gross, body horror, then this is not the book for you. At times the descriptions were so disgusting, and awful, it felt more like it was there to shock the reader, than necessary to drive the story.
I also found the story super confusing and that was not due to the dual timelines, that was probably the least confusing thing about the book. Instead I was confused about the motivations of the faculty and the purpose of running Hellebore as a school. I mean I guess the motivations of the faculty was to eat to survive, but why run Hellebore as a school once they had trapped their victims there. At one point Alessa even says that the classes did not make sense, so what was even the point of wasting time teaching them, and why keep the students around until graduation? It just did not make any sense to me.
Next we get to the group of students fighting for their lives in the library of Hellebore. I’ll be honest, I really didn’t care if any of them lived or died (well, maybe I wanted to see one of them get his comeuppance, but only because he was truly awful). I think the problem was that we didn’t get to truly know any of them. We only received a very surface level introduction to any of them, so I didn’t feel anything, except sympathy for the way they were tortured as they died, but I didn’t feel a connection to any of them in any meaningful way.
As a result of not feeling a connection to any of the characters, I also didn’t find the novel scary, despite the horrific things that were happening. I didn’t even feel a sense of urgency, or suspense for any of the characters as they sought to escape.
In the end I liked The Library at Hellebore enough to keep reading, but I didn’t get a lot out of it. I didn’t hate it, but I probably would not recommend it unless someone is really into this type of horror.
Life, Tea, and Everything 