The Ravens by Danielle Paige and Kass Morgan

“As I gradually restore Words Like Silver to its archive of reviews written between 2011 and 2024, I'll aim to first and foremost make my reading history explorable by publishing the blurbs and short reflections as books cross my mind, with the goal of eventually transferring and fleshing out the original WLS content. For now, please enjoy this brief spotlight”

From New York Times best-selling authors Kass Morgan and Danielle Paige comes a thrilling, dark contemporary fantasy about a prestigious sorority of witches and two girls caught up in its world of sinister magic and betrayals.

At first glance, the sisters of ultra-exclusive Kappa Rho Nu--the Ravens--seem like typical sorority girls. Ambitious, beautiful, and smart, they're the most powerful girls on Westerly College's Savannah, Georgia, campus.

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But the Ravens aren't just regular sorority girls. They're witches.

Scarlett Winter has always known she's a witch--and she's determined to be the sorority's president, just like her mother and sister before her. But if a painful secret from her past ever comes to light, she could lose absolutely everything . . .

Vivi Devereaux has no idea she's a witch and she's never lived in one place long enough to make a friend. So when she gets a coveted bid to pledge the Ravens, she vows to do whatever it takes to be part of the magical sisterhood. The only thing standing in her way is Scarlett, who doesn't think Vivi is Ravens material.

But when a dark power rises on campus, the girls will have to put their rivalry aside to save their fellow sisters. Someone has discovered the Ravens' secret. And that someone will do anything to see these witches burn . . .

This book will, from now on, be my go-to Halloween recommendation. Halloween is my favorite holiday and the one that, without fail, I wish I could celebrate forever. So finding a book that captures that aura is always appealing — and why my go-to escapism tends to be of a paranormal variety rather than contemporary.

It’s primarily about a sorority of witches. It contains the best of the college tropes (although those are quickly overshadowed by the spoooooky focus) as well as pleasing imagery and lore about the occult. The characters were flawed and likable, the imagery made me instantly nostalgic for autumn on a college campus, and it had a view of Greek life that noted its drawbacks without demonizing it. (Considering the subject matter, excuse the pun.)

I’ve figured out that my taste in escapist fiction is usually a book I’d want to read during a thunderstorm: dark & stormy.

This book is one I requested, after a few years of not really ever requesting any review copies, and I’m glad I came out of ARC retirement for this one. I remember reading Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige and not enjoying it much. That same narrative quality present in Dorothy — a certain macabre flavoring — thrives in The Ravens, which contains (among others): a private Southern college in Savannah, a nomadic tarot-card-reading mother, history classes, and of course, plenty of dripping ivy.

♪ These are a few of my favorite things. ♪

As a white person, I can’t speak to whether or not this means anything, but I appreciate that the default descriptor for any character assumed they were of a different race. Any white person introduced was introduced as “a white girl with dark hair” or whatever. In YA fiction, unfortunately, that’s rarer than it should be, and the default has usually been “white” in character descriptors. Additionally, there were multiple gender identities and sexualities very casually embedded in the narrative.

I also mentioned this, but I appreciated a positive yet nuanced view of Greek life. For me, my Greek life was a positive experience although I know that the system has some f*cked up history. I think most people within the system — particularly the ones in my social circle — have had both positives and negatives, and have probably on several occasions gone on drunk rants about how annoying it can be. That’s a whole other discussion, one that relentlessly bothered me in books like Frat Girl where the depiction is flat, stereotypical, and exclusively negative. (I’m usually of the opinion that we should listen more to people who criticize a system than those who glorify it, but that book in particular had zero nuance.) In contrast, The Ravens used the alignment and parallel of a coven with a sorority marvelously. It worked for an array of reasons.

Vivi was sweet, likable, and frank. I liked her a lot as a narrator and actually don’t have much to say about her. She was great for the book, as the naïve fledgling witch with an enormous well of power. Scarlett, our other star, was ambitious and controlling in a way that I quite honestly related to, so I appreciated the development of her character as she tackled her emotions and the consequences of her actions. They had clear character arcs that were well done.

The writing style was colorful and sensory without any particular bells and whistles. I appreciate books when the writing style complements the story and vice versa, and in this case, they fit together perfectly. I loved the precision of certain lines that rang true about my college experience because it’s a depiction I haven’t yet seen.

College fiction I’ve read doesn’t even come close to the “essence” of my W&L experience, which I think would be impossible, but I still can’t help but want to find books that echo it in the same way that I read books which echoed my high school experience. The Ravens knew when to lean into the glamorized bits of a small private Southern college: the dark academia, crisp fall air, the thrill of first parties and bonfires.

Essentially, The Ravens was accurate enough to give it an appealing collegiate structure, while having a knack for when to amplify or elevate the stakes and imagery. The plot and characters and all felt extremely readable in that I didn’t have to think too hard about them — so, good.

It felt in many ways like the atmosphere I’d wanted from Fallen by Lauren Kate (which I got) and The Magnolia League by Katie Crouch (which also takes place in Savannah, Georgia.) Overgrown ivy and schoolgirls with secrets. Hello, peak dark academia. For me, Fallen was successful (albeit lost some of its luster with rereads as I got older) while The Magnolia League doesn’t feel nearly as skillfully done. To put it bluntly, The Ravens feels like the better version of what The Magnolia League was attempting to do. More dark Southern lit, please!

The Ravens is a relatively quick read because it’s fun and spooky. I read it in one or two sittings. It wasn’t afraid to get dark when it needed to, which is partly why it turned out so excellently. It felt well-proportioned and satisfying, while still retaining the atmosphere and moodiness needed to achieve this kind of story.

Sinister, indulgent, lively, and addictive — with precise college descriptions that made me nostalgic.

For fans of:

Practical Magic (movie); The Sex Lives of College Girls (TV); Fallen by Lauren Kate; The Magnolia League by Katie Crouch; Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead; The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland; Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl; any paranormal CW show.