Review of The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher

Lex Croucher's foray into dark academia is fantastic, with angst, mature themes, magical adventure, sinister plots, far-reaching repercussions, and a childhood heartbreak that is revisited and revised in heartbreaking, satisfying form.

Briar and Sebastian are childhood best friends, but when Sebastian is accepted into the renowned nearby magic school at age 11 and Briar is not, the two have a heartbreaking, fraught split.

Briar has always dreamed of attending the Temple School of Thaumaturgy, and the rejection in their youth has always stung. Their unhappiness is compounded by the complete lack of correspondence from Seb. Briar pours themself and their resentment into working out, doing menial jobs, and fully abandoning ambition or dreams.

Then Briar works their way into a temporary maintenance job at the school and soon realizes that their old friend (now called Bastian) has become one of the most feared, powerful, cold students on campus. And Briar also discovers that the school is hiding dark secrets with unimaginable potential repercussions for the world.

The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones is dark, edgy, yet also warm, with mature magic-focused plot points, deep friendships, romance, adventure and strategizing, plus opportunities for redemption. (This is the type of tone and grown-up magical adventure and dark academia that I had hoped Lev Grossman's The Magicians might be; for me, the feel of that book was grim and lacked satisfying character development.)

Croucher offers rich characters, romantic turmoil, some steamy moments, LGBTQ+ representation,  and enough intrigue to keep the pacing and my own interest moving right along.

I'm a huge Lex Croucher fan and I'm in for all Croucher books, always.

I listened to this novel as an audiobook courtesy of Libro.fm and Harper Voyager.

More Great Lex Croucher Books

Lex Croucher is also the author of the wonderful Not for the Faint of Heart and Gwen & Art Are Not in Love, as well as the upcoming Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay. Croucher also wrote romcoms with a Regency-era twist, Reputation, which I'm about to dive into, and its sequels Infamous and Trouble.