Book Review: The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

Mogsy’s Rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Nightfire (July 22, 2025)

Length: 288 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Time for another unpopular opinion, but despite the love I have for the dark academia genre, The Library at Hellebore didn’t really work for me—and for a pretty fundamental reason: I just couldn’t connect with the main character! While other aspects of the book had a lot of promise, if I’m struggling to get a bead on the people living through it all, then everything else tends to get lost, simple as that.

Story-wise, the novel takes place at the titular Hellebore Technical Institute, which actually is a prison disguised as a school for the magically gifted who are simply too dangerous to be allowed to roam free. Our protagonist, Alessa Li, is one such individual, forcibly enrolled after a violent incident involving her abusive stepfather. Here, she and her fellow students are supposed to be contained for the duration of their “rehabilitation,” where they learn to control their powers safely until they are deemed “normal” enough to return to the outside world. But one year later, instead of the freedom they were hoping for, Alessa and her peers find themselves hunted down on graduation day as Hellebore’s faculty quite literally begin attacking and devouring the student body.

As a bloodbath ensues, Alessa and seven of her classmates manage to flee to the school’s library and barricade themselves inside. But even then, they are not safe—for they have completely forgotten about the Librarian lurking in the stacks, whose hunger is just as deadly as the rest of the faculty’s. Trapped between the horrors outside and the monster within, the group of students are forced into an unthinkable bargain in order to survive: offer a human sacrifice each night, or risk being consumed themselves.

First, let’s start with the positives. The Library at Hellebore delivers an atmosphere that is both gorgeous and grotesque. If you’ve read the author before, you know how it goes; Khaw’s writing is always sharp and visceral and a little surreal, which pairs well with the book’s descent into body horror. It’s not an easy style, but it does a good job immersing the reader into the chaos and dread of Hellebore’s world. I also appreciated the novel’s unique angle on the well-tread dark academia genre especially when it was filtered through the distinctive tone of the writing, which helped convey the nightmarish nature of the setting.

Next, the so-so: While not completely deal-breaking, I was not crazy about the dual timeline structure alternating between Alessa’s early days at Hellebore and the present-day siege. Yes, it helped with building tensions as the two narratives gradually converged, but ultimately it was uneven and distracting, structurally damaging its own impact. We are also forced to learn the characters and the ins-and-outs of the school up front, making it feel like you’re always falling behind.

Another thing I was ambivalent about was Khaw’s actual prose, which was a little too purple in places. Every paragraph felt like it was dressed up to be a showpiece, packed with layers of pretentious metaphors and obscure vocabulary. Likewise, it was as if every big idea needed to be communicated in some profound, performative way, which didn’t actually make the story seem smarter—just harder to follow. At times, I found myself thinking, had everything just been stated plainly, maybe the reading experience would have been smoother and felt a lot less like it was trying to be an advanced lit course.

And now, what didn’t work for me at all: characters, characters, characters! As a protagonist, Alessa was honestly insufferable, vacillating between nihilism and self-righteousness with zero nuance. From the very beginning, I just wanted to tell her to get over herself. Then there were the others trapped in the library with her. Right now, I can’t remember a single one of their names to save my life or even describe any of their personalities, because they left so little impression. Despite the diversity in the cast, none of them felt genuine or emotionally real, and that’s what I really care about—not what their identity labels are or what kind of fancy powers they have.

In the end, perhaps the most frustrating part of all is this: on paper, The Library at Hellebore should have hit it out of the park. There was so much about it that I should have loved, and yet it fell flat. Bold and bloody it might be, but there was just no spark there to truly capture my attention, no strong characters to carry the narrative, and not enough cohesion to ground the worldbuilding or storytelling. Not going to lie, I probably would have DNF’ed this one had it not been such a quick read at less than 300 pages, so there was that, but I sadly still came away disappointed. I’m thinking that Cassandra Khaw just might not be for me.