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As I Descended
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As I Descended
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As I Descended
Audiobook9 hours

As I Descended

Written by Robin Talley

Narrated by Amielynn Abellera

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

Amnesty Honour winner Robin Talley is back with a Shakespeare-inspired story of revenge and redemption, where fair is foul, and foul is fair.

From the acclaimed author of Lies We Tell Ourselves, Robin Talley, comes a Shakespeare-inspired story of revenge and redemption, where fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—but one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey. Golden child Delilah is a legend at exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. But Delilah doesn’t know that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to unseat Delilah for the scholarship. After all, it would lock in Maria’s attendance at Stanford—and assure her and Lily four more years in a shared dorm room.

Together, Maria and Lily harness the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school. But when feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what’s imagined, the girls must attempt to put a stop to the chilling series of events they’ve accidentally set in motion.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 6, 2016
ISBN9780008213008
Author

Robin Talley

Robin Talley studied literature and communications at American University. She lives in Washington, DC, with her wife, but visits both Boston and New York regularly despite her moral opposition to Massachusetts winters and Times Square. Her first book was 2014's Lies We Tell Ourselves. Visit her online at robintalley.com or on Twitter at @robin_talley.

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Reviews for As I Descended

Rating: 3.2857141632653066 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

49 ratings6 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved Talley’s first book, Lies We Tell Ourselves, but wasn’t sure what to expect from her supernatural book. I don’t usually read supernatural stuff, but since I love her writing style, I wanted to give it a shot. I’m SO glad I did. This is the ghost story to end all ghost stories. It’s so creepy and unsettling, but not overly so. It’s still a very literary, very beautiful book, but… wow. It’s also a retelling of Macbeth, which I read in school but just... don’t remember… whoops. So I can’t comment on how great of a retelling it is, but I highly recommend it. I would read anything by Talley
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is fascinating and intense and succeeded both as a ghost story and as a drama. Its also very much a tragedy, which I wasn't quite expecting. The characters are diverse and complex and the setting haunting. I listened to this on audiobook and really enjoyed the book in this format. Definitely I would read again someday.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.75

    I love a good Shakespeare retelling, and I really appreciated the way this retelling of Macbeth was handled. It was definitely different. At times a bit too different. I loved the diversity in this book. My one complaint is that atmospheric nature of this ghostly tale sometimes went a bit heavy handed, even at the expense of the plot. The story seemed forced in some places, like it was trying too hard. Still, this was an interesting read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I showed up for Macbeth and got a dull haunted house story instead. Sure, there are Macbeth allusions aplenty, and the only pleasure I had in reading this book was in tallying them up. The rest was a dreary slog. Take away all the Macbeth trappings and I would have rated this one star.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was provided to me as an uncorrected digital proof by the publisher, via Edelweiss.

    Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—but one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey. Golden child Delilah is a legend at exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. But Delilah doesn’t know that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to unseat Delilah for the scholarship. After all, it would lock in Maria’s attendance at Stanford—and assure her and Lily four more years in a shared dorm room.
    Together, Maria and Lily harness the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school. But when feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what’s imagined, the girls must attempt to put a stop to the chilling series of events they’ve accidentally set in motion.

    Let me share a little something about myself. I love the horror genre: movies, books, short stories, poetry, songs, you name it, I dig it. I’m not a big fan of gore, but promise me a good jump scare, and I’m there. That being said, I did not go into As I Descended expecting a scary story. In my experience, I have never come across true horror in the YA genre. This book though, was truly creepy. I even cheered at one point, because I got scared, and it’s been such a long time since that has happened. The main character, Maria, is a kid with a spooky background and a strong belief in the spirit realm and its ability to affect the real world. Maria is well-developed, and goes through major personality changes through the course of the book; from being a kid who won’t consider breaking the rules to someone who is willing to kill to get what she feels she deserves. Her secret girlfriend, Lily, is a complex character. She says she loves Maria, but, despite her own atheistic beliefs, she insists on purchasing a Ouija board in order to perform a séance. Her purpose being to use Maria’s spiritual beliefs to manipulate her into taking active steps toward taking down the school’s Queen, Delilah. However, when she gets what she wants, she refuses to accept the fact that spirits are involved. This leads to her own undoing. As I Descended is a story about how ambition and a sense of entitlement can lead otherwise good people to do things they wouldn’t normally do. The reader goes from seeing Maria and Lily as victims, to seeing them as monsters, and their depiction of Delilah as a vicious bully gets hit with a strong dose of reality as well. Two things bother me. First of all, Lily’s true reasoning for having a séance feels contrived. How did she come to the conclusion that using a Ouija board would result in Maria ending Delilah’s reign? Secondly, the blurb on the book describes Maria and Lily as the school’s power couple. Their relationship was a secret from most of their classmates, which to me, nullifies the power they could have had as an out couple. It puts them in the weak position of always having to be careful and lie to their friends.
    This book has scary moments, diverse characters, and a setting well-suited for the narrative. I enjoyed reading it, and would recommend it for readers 14 and older who like to be creeped out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.Maria and Lily are a couple on the rise, but Delilah is always one step ahead of them. At their boarding school, Delilah seems a shoo-in for the prestigious Kingsley Prize, an award Maria and Lily desperately want so they can attend the same college and stay together.So Maria and Lily decide to do something to take back what they see as rightfully theirs. But they stir up spirits that would have been better left alone, and set in motion tragic events that will lead to death and madness.I just really, really liked this book. First, the Shakespeare retelling was brilliant. As an English major and Shakespeare fan, I had so much fun seeing how Talley took the classic tale of Macbeth and rewrote it with a modern setting and a lesbian Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Talley really made the story her own, while still paying a brilliant homage to the original source material.The characters are all so complex and multilayered, and the relationships feel painfully real. Every teenage emotion is heightened, but not in a way that reads as hysterical teenage dramatics. Rather, these characters read as truly human, caught up in forces within and without that they are unable to control.This is a very creepy book too. The spirits, whatever you believe about their actual presence (depending on your personal beliefs and how reliable you find certain characters), haunt and meddle in insidious, frightening, and deadly ways that carry throughout the entire story.I didn't feel like the epilogue was necessarily needed. It's always nice to have a bit of a concluding wrap up to tie things together (and I'm one of those people who craves resolution), but I feel like the book would have been even more haunting if it had ended with the last chapter before the epilogue.Read this book. I strongly recommend it, and I couldn't put it down. It was so unique, so well-written, and so, so creepy. This is how a young adult novel should be done.