From author Elisa A. Bonnin comes Lovely Dark and Deep, a YA dark academia novel exploring magic, loneliness, and the power of found family.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Elisa A. Bonnin’s Lovely Dark and Deep, which is out March 25th 2025.
Hidden off the coast of Washington, veiled in mist, there is an island that does not appear on any map. And on that island is Ellery West.
The acclaimed school for magic has always been home for Faith. After an international move and a childhood spent adjusting to a new culture and a new language, Faith feels like Ellery is the only place she can be herself. That is, until Faith and another student walk into the forest, and only Faith walks out.
Marked with the Red Stripe across her uniform that designates all students deemed too dangerous to attend regular classes, Faith becomes a social pariah, an exile of Ellery West. But all she has to do is keep her head down for one more year so she can graduate, and get to keep her magic. Because when students fail out of Ellery West, they have their magic taken away. Forever. And Faith can’t let that happen.
Except terrifying things are happening to students, and the dark magic that was unleashed in the forest still seems to be at work. To stop it, Faith and the other Red Stripes will have to work together, risking expulsion from the magical world altogether.
1. The Last Worst Summer
In her dreams, Faith always came back to the woods.
In this dream, she was standing in the darkness of a spring night, surrounded by shadow. In front of her, Sydney lay on the stump of a fallen tree, eyes closed and limbs splayed as she waited for the magic. Faith wanted
to shout at her, to tell her to run, but she couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but watch as Sydney screamed.
Her limbs convulsed, muscles pulling taut as she thrashed on the wooden surface. Then she opened her eyes. They were the color of midnight, nothing human left in them.
Faith ran. Through the woods, trees closing in around her, shadows rushing in from behind. Branches whipped at her face, creeping roots burned away at the last moment by ribbons of fire. Behind her she heard shrieks, laughter.
Someone called her name. She felt a touch, skeletal and spidery, on the back of her neck.
Faith jolted awake.
When she woke, the first thing she felt was the gentle sway of the sea. She was on a ferry, seated in a booth by a window. The shapes of distant islands were visible on the other side of the glass. The ferry was filled with the steady murmur of conversation, so familiar that for a moment Faith forgot this wasn’t just the start of an ordinary year at Ellery West.
Then she looked up and saw the stares people levied her way, the anger and fear in their eyes.
She remembered. She was Maria Faith Castillo, senior at Ellery West.
And she had killed her best friend.
