*I received an ecopy of this book via BookSirens. This has not influenced my review.*

A magic academy, a grumpy teacher, a sunshine-y psychic, mind reading, visions of murder, grief over a lost lover in the past, the potential for happiness with another in the future—so many ideas, but the author made them work together so well!

Dorian was truly a grumpy character. Not sexy grumpy, but genuinely grumpy, and you know what? I’m here for it. (Which is not to say he’s not also sexy. Clearly Milo finds him so ;-)) He was strict with his students, avoided hanging out with other teachers, constantly pushed Milo away, rarely smiled even when he wanted to, but he wasn’t a bad person. He cared (about his students and Milo, at least). He was just realistically flawed. And a lot of it was because of the grief he was still struggling with from losing one of his partners years ago.

Milo, Dorian’s other partner whom he’s alternately slept with and pushed away since Finn’s death, was the complete opposite. He smiled and joked and was the person everyone loved and idolized. And he simply would not let Dorian push him away.

There were a lot of other important characters in this book too, because Dorian had a whole class of students, all of whom had their own personalities and interpersonal relationships and different types of magic, and that was fun!

There was also just a whole interesting magic system with so many different types of magic, all set in a world that’s very much like ours, but with magic a common part of it. Dorian’s mind reading ability was especially neat, the way this author wrote about it with everyone’s mind working a little differently.

Overall, I enjoyed this story with its grumpy MC, bit of mystery, bit of romance, bit of action, and lots of magic!

*Rating: 4 Stars // Read Date: 2023 // Format: Ebook via TTS*