Mallory Pearson: "Voice Like a Hyacinth" (ARC Review)

Title: Voice Like a Hyacinth [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Mallory Pearson [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Supernatural, Contemporary
Year: 2025
Age: 14+ (technically a NA book, but it can be read by mature teens. See the WARNING! section though)
Stars: 5/5
Pros: Immersive, visceral, gorgeously written.
Cons: Quite dark, if ultimately hopeful.
WARNING! Blood and gore, sexual harassment, self-cutting (during a ritual), alcohol and drug abuse, vomiting, near-drowning, fire, death/animal death. On a psychological level: codependency, high-stakes competition, familial pressure.
Will appeal to: Those who feel a pull towards visual arts (especially painting). Those who love a story that crosses the space between all-consuming friendship and queer love.

Blurb: Art student Jo Kozak and her fellow classmates and best friends, Caroline, Finch, Amrita, and Saz, are one another’s muses - so close they have their own language and so devoted to the craft that they’ll do anything to keep their inspiration alive. Even if it means naively resorting to the occult to unlock their creativity and to curse their esteemed, if notoriously creepy, professor. They soon learn the horrible price to be paid for such a transgressive ritual. In its violent aftermath, things are changing. Jo is feeling unnervingly haunted by something inexplicable. Their paintings, once prodigious and full of life, are growing dark and unhealthy. And their journey together - as women, students, and artists - is starting to crumble. To right the wrong they’ve done, these five desperate friends will take their obsession a step too far. When that happens, there may be no turning back. (Amazon)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: this title was up for grabs on NetGalley (in the Read Now section). Thanks to 47North for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

LEVEL UP

Eight months ago, I reviewed Pearson's debut novel We Ate the Dark. Despite the abundance of purple prose, I liked it quite a bit, noting that there was "a robust dose of lyrical writing peeking from under the sometimes intimidating similes" and that "Pearson has the makings of a good writer, if only she can rein those similes in a bit. Then again, this is a debut book, so maybe she still has to hone her craft" (the second quote comes from my reply to a fellow blogger's comment). It turns out I was right on both counts - and the Goodreads average rating agrees with me this time. On a content level, Pearson's sophomore novel draws on the same main theme of her debut ("female friendship and queer love and the liminal space between the two"), but ups the ante by setting her story in a small, yet competitive art college, and steeping it in codependency and obsession, both with the art and the friendship. In the same guise, though somehow in reverse - by way of subtracting instead of adding - the author sticks to the poetical, luscious writing she employed for her first novel, but prunes it of all the (often overdone) metaphors and craft her prose into a thing of beauty. The result is a terrific book (in more than one sense) that only goes to show how much Pearson has grown as a writer, while staying true to her signature style. [...]

IMPASSIONED LOOK

Voice Like a Hyacinth is the story of five seniors - four lesbian, one bisexual - a at a small, yet very driven and competitive art college. They've been a close-knit group since junior year, but now the rivalry their school is forcing on them and (maybe even more) the looming threat of life after college is fracturing them in ways both small and huge. Messy, all-consuming friendship (and longing), dark academia and equally dark magic, visual art brilliance/artist's innocence and their corruption, a dash of #MeToo that sets the story in motion, all intersect during the whole senior year of the main characters, alternating patches of beauty and horror, elation and despair, in a way that - despite the supernatural angle - feels very true to life. I must admit that, when tragedy strikes, you have to suspend your disbelief a little - not about the magical bit, but about forensics allegedly not being able to realise that something doesn't compute...even in the aftermath of such a destructive event - but it's a very small quibble for me. With its honest look at art and (forced) competition, the struggle of creation, toxic yet pure emotional entanglements, the ways we hurt the ones we love more, the ways we (are forced to) change exactly while we refuse to, and ultimately, the ways we can make peace with ourselves, VLAH is a haunted and haunting gem of a book everyone who's ever felt strongly (about people, about art or their own craft) needs in their life.

For more Supernatural books click here.

For more Contemporary books click here.