Episode 6.2: ‘Gothikana’ by RuNyx
This week’s episode features a book like nothing we’ve featured before: a spicy TikTok dark romance that the BookTok girlies are shouting from the rooftops and calling dark academia at every chance they get.
"If this is madness," she whispered almost against his lips, "drown me in it."
Corvina Clemm is a woman with secrets. The last thing she expects to receive is an admission letter from the University of Verenmore, a place just as secretive.
A castle atop a mountain, Verenmore is steeped in shadows, deceit and death, a place where students have been disappearing every five years for over a century. As Corvina becomes caught up in unravelling the clues to solve the mystery, her path collides with Vad Deverell, her enigmatic professor.
Vad, too, is a man with secrets. And he cannot allow Corvina to get close enough to discover what he hides. But whenever she is near, his heart and soul yearn to possess her.
As Corvina and Vad become more and more entangled, their passion for each other could be the very thing to solve the mystery of Verenmore - or it could bring them both down in flames.
With a secretive university located on a mountain, an enigmatic professor and a forbidden romance, it’s ticking some boxes already, but will it live up to our examination?
In this episode we discuss:
Uncomfortable and creepy relationships with power imbalances
The lack of academics
A lack of answers and unfinished business
You can listen to it here:
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Gothikana’ by RuNyx
‘Morbidly Yours’ by Ivy Fairbanks
‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe
‘Romeo and Juliet’ by William Shakespeare
OTHER MEDIA AND POP CULTURE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Severus Snape from ‘Harry Potter’
The Bechdel Test
‘Watcher’ on YouTube
‘Buzzfeed Paranormal
‘Most Haunted’ (2002-2019)
‘American Pie’ (1999)
If you want to take a trip to Verenmore yourself, we’d love it if you considered using our bookshop.org link below to purchase your copy of the book which helps us fund ‘The Dark Academicals’ and gives back to independent bookshops at no extra cost to you.
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