I’ve always known I was a monster. 
My mother abandoned me when I was 10 years old because I have a freakish mutant disease that makes me incapable of feeling pain. I bounced from one foster family to another because too many people like to test my medical condition in a game of “try to make Ollie scream”. At 16, I killed a man for taking that game too far. 
Two years later, I’m still on the run in Kodiak, Alaska. Here, I’m the most dangerous person around, until I come face to face with a creature that should only exist in folklore. The monster is an aswang, and I, with my medical anomaly, am uniquely qualified to hunt the beast that haunts the night. At least, that’s what the two scarred, mostly crazy ‘swang hunters tell me when they kidnap me and take me to Fear University, a school where young students learn to hunt and kill aswangs. 
For once in my life, I belong. I’m needed. I make a home for myself inside the university masquerading as an old Alaskan prison. But when certain truths come to light and even more lies are exposed, I fear that I, Ollie Andrews, am the worst kind of monster of all. And, maybe, they should be hunting me.

IN A NUTSHELL
‘Fear University‘ kicks off an original, violent, emotionally-charged Urban Fantasy series that is more New Adult than Young Adult fiction. Ollie Andrews, the young woman who is telling this story, is a great creation, She carries more scars than most Urban Fantasy heroines and she trusts no one. The story is a compelling mix of intrigue, violence, hormones, haunted pasts and relentless tension. I’ve already downloaded the next book in the series.

‘Fear University‘ has been gathering virtual dust in my TBR pile since 2018. I finally dragged it to the surface because I needed something simple but original and well-written to distract me from reality.

When I started this novel, I thought that it was a Young Adult book where the emphasis would be on overcoming incredible odds by sheer force of personality in order to prove who you are and where most of the bad things happened off stage. I was wrong about all of that.

Ollie Andrews, the teenager through whose eyes the story is told, is not about winning. She’s about survival. She’s survived abandonment, poverty and horrifying abuse. She’s alone and on the run. She’s tough, self-reliant and trusts no one. She sees herself as a monster partly because her body is wired in a way that makes her unable to experience physical pain and partly because she has always been seen as monstrous by the people who should have cared for her. Ollie also has a strong desire, that she has no expectations of satisfying, to find a home where she is accepted and valued. Ollie’s emotional vulnerability combined with her physical inability to feel pain power the story.

The violence in ‘Fear University‘ starts on the first page and is always close to the surface. The fight scenes involve blades and teeth and claws and often end with spilt blood, rent flesh and cooling corpses.

Part of the fun of the book is sharing Ollie’s scramble to understand what’s happening when a lethal late-night attack from a creature that should be a dog but isn’t, ends with her waking up in the Fear University. I won’t go into the details other than to say that Fear University is about as far away from Hogwarts as you can get.

As Ollie struggles with past traumas and present challenges she slowly starts to hope that she has finally found a place where she belongs, where she is valued for she is rather than exploited for what she is.

At first, I didn’t see why ‘Fear University’ is sometimes labelled Dark Academia. Then, I met the man in charge and everything became clear. He’s a ruthless narcissist who uses a mix of threats, emotional manipulation and lies to impose his will on everyone around him. Ollie knows that he wants something from her but it takes her a while to find out what that is and what he’ll do to get it. What follows describes the violation of a place of safety combined with suppressing the abilty to speak out so perfectly that it had more impact on me than any of the bloody violence.

‘Fear University‘ comes up with some fairly frightening non-human nasties that were new to me. Just the idea of them is disturbing. Yet it was the human nasties who were the scariest because I know how closely based on reality they are.

The ending worked well enough for this to be a standalone novel if you want it to be but it left me hungry to find out what happens to Ollie next. I’ve already downloaded ‘The Killing Season’, the next book in the series. I’m expecting something dark, bloody and laced with betrayals.

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