The Last Graduate

Naomi Novik

Book 2 of The Scholomance

El Higgins enters her senior year at the Scholomance, a brutal school of magic where survival itself is the curriculum, only to find the school has developed an unusual and dangerous fixation on her. As she fights to protect the makeshift family of allies she's built, she must decide how far she's willing to bend her principles to get everyone, including herself, out alive. The book deepens the slow-building relationship between El and fellow student Orion Lake while expanding the series' dark, inventive magic system. It ends on a major cliffhanger that sets up the trilogy's finale.