St. Vasili’s Academy is a duet of contemporary romances, The Pretty Savage and The Pretty Psycho, set at an elite academy for assassins. Book one in the duet was on my to-be-read list for months and I was excited for the second to release so I could binge them both. I had high hopes, but this duology left a lot to be desired.
Vega wants to leave her position in the group of assassins she has served since she was a small child. But before her boss will let her go, she must complete one last mission. She’s sent to infiltrate St. Vasili’s Academy and kill Adrian Zylla, heir to the throne of an ultra-powerful criminal organization.
He’s just as dangerous as she is, and what starts out as a simple job quickly unravels when Vega and Adrian’s hatred spirals into an obsessive attraction. Long-buried secrets come to light, betrayal abounds, and Vega will have to fight the demons of her past at every turn.
St. Vasili’s Academy is a dual-point-of-view, enemies-to-lovers story which is usually a slam dunk in contemporary romance. Combine that with a female assassin, something most commonly found in romantasies, and this series should have been amazing, but there were some glaring flaws that were hard to get past.
The characters in this story did not come through in a way that I could connect with. Vega is dramatically overconfident in a way that borders on narcissism. I normally love a cocky character, but she just comes off as ridiculous. Both her dialogue and her internal thoughts are presented in a way that seems very unrealistic — even the most competent and confident people don’t actually sound like that. It feels like a caricature.
Beyond that, many of Vega’s choices and conclusions make absolutely zero sense, given that this character is supposed to be whip-smart. She dramatically comes to incorrect conclusions on whims throughout the series, putting herself in danger. It’s hard to believe that if she was an actual assassin she would last this long in a dangerous world with this kind of thinking.
Adrian, on the other hand, is your typical dark romance hero; broody and obsessive. This would, in a vacuum, be fine, but he’s also incredibly repetitive both in dialogue and interiority. It’s exhausting.
The side characters had issues too — the Dean goes from slightly pompous and unfriendly (a situation that causes Vega to seriously overreact) to stammering and unsure with one pretty basic threat from our main character, who is a student. One would think the Dean of an academy for assassins would be a little more impervious to such things. I know this is a little detail, but there are a great many of these issues that stack up.
Vega’s best friend Yolanda is the only even semi-reasonable character in this whole mess, and she’s part of an insane plot twist that is left completely unresolved at the end of the duet. Readers have no idea what happened to her. It seems like the author is purposely leaving it open-ended for a potential spin-off series, but it’s a frustrating choice.
Vega’s internal dialogue is a little insufferable. It’s incredibly repetitive. We get it, the Dean is an asshole. We get it, your life has been violent and you don’t know how to feel. Adrian suffers from this as well. By the end of the book, I was so deeply over the excessive rumination on the nature of violence and evil.
In the second book, readers are given a very half-assed third-act breakup, that is both nonsensical and entirely unnecessary, but by that point, I wasn’t surprised.
The writing was also quite flawed on a line level. In the second book especially, there were numerous sentences punctuated with dramatic periods between each word. Look, I like this for emphasis on occasion, but thrice in the span of two pages is a bit much. And thrice is a generous estimate. There were commas thrown in like confetti, leading to a whole bunch of comma splices. This book could have been significantly better with extensive help from an editor.
St. Vasili’s Academy is a slow burn — which means there is not even great spice to make up for the fact that I don’t care about these characters for the majority of the story.
I know it seems like I ripped this book to shreds, and I kind of did. It had such a promising premise, and I really wanted to like this book, but the writing just hit far too many unforgivable sins for me to get past.
Writing: 1.5
Spice: 3.5
Kindle: free with Kindle Unlimited
Paperback: $16.99
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