An Arcane Inheritance

Get Out meets The Matrix in this solid excursion into dark academia from Cole (So Let Them Burn). At 21, Ellory Morgan is older than the other freshmen at Warren University in Hartford, Conn. Additionally, her status as a Jamaican immigrant in the awkward American tax bracket where she can’t afford college on her own but doesn’t qualify for financial aid makes her feel she doesn’t belong on the Ivy League campus. As the school year progresses, she experiences increasingly peculiar events: strange hallucinations, feelings of déjà vu, a tattoo on her neck that vanishes as soon as she sees it, and hidden notes in her own handwriting that she doesn’t remember writing. One of these notes claims her hated academic rival, Hudson Graves, will help her. Together they dive into Warren’s unusual occult history and, in a late and somewhat clichéd twist, discover the startling truth about the Goodwin scholarship that brought Ellory to campus. The resulting tale doesn’t break any new ground, but it competently engages with the tropes of the genre, hits expected beats cleanly, and delivers a heartfelt if obvious moral about inequality. Cole’s fans will be pleased. Agent: Emily Forney, BookEnds Literary. (Dec.)