Content levels
Trigger warnings
Positive tags
Hero archetypes
Heroine archetypes
Tropes
Themes
Synopsis
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.
Tags
Nocticadia: content & age rating
Intended for adult readers (18+).
This dark academia romance contains explicit sexual content between a professor and student, forbidden relationships with power imbalances, themes of death and mental illness, and Gothic horror elements including haunted settings and human remains.
What to know going in
This book has moderate violence, explicit sexual content, and moderate language. Content notes include death of parent, death, and grief (see the full list above).
Who'll love this
Adult readers will be drawn to the intensely atmospheric Gothic setting, forbidden professor-student romance, and dark mysteries surrounding a haunted university.