Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—even if no one knows it but them.  

Only one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey.

Golden child Delilah is a legend at the exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. She runs the school, and if she chose, she could blow up Maria and Lily’s whole world with a pointed look, or a carefully placed word. 

But what Delilah doesn’t know is that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to make their dreams come true. And the first step is unseating Delilah for the Kingsley Prize. The full scholarship, awarded to Maria, will lock in her attendance at Stanford―and four more years in a shared dorm room with Lily.  

Maria and Lily will stop at nothing to ensure their victory—including harnessing the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school. 

But when feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what is imagined, the girls must decide where they draw the line. 

From acclaimed author Robin Talley comes a Shakespeare-inspired story of revenge and redemption, where fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Thank you Edelweiss and HarperCollins for the e-galley 

My first Robin Talley book and it was spectacular! As I Descended is an F/F retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's super creepy and mysterious, and I got scared reading it at night. It takes place on a boarding school for the rich which makes it ten times better to be honest. 

I have not read Macbeth or anything related to it. So I didn't know ANYTHING about it and I didn't know what was going to happen in the book. Some things did surprise me because I was unprepared for them, which made it awesome. I was anxious and nervous for every single character. I didn't know what fate would bring to them

There are two Latinxs in the top 4. Maria and Mateo, both have POVs in this book and take an important part in all the plot and the intensity. I love the perfect Spanish in this book. The translated sentences were A+ and the questions marks were put correctly, also the accents on the vowels. I love love this kind of detail. Most of the time I don't see this in books. The exclamation marks and question marks only have one, when in Spanish, they have at the beginning and end of the sentence. It was a wonderful thing to see.

And the last two characters: Lily, who needs to wear crutches to walk because she was hurt in a car accident, is Maria's girlfriend and also one of the POVs. Lastly, we have Brandon, Mateo's boyfriend and Maria's best friend. These all are the core 4 and you will be thrust upon their lives. Of course there is also Delilah, the big obstacle between Maria and her goal. This is how it all starts and ends. 

What I liked the most is La Llorona big part on all this. Mateo talks about her A LOT. And I love that Robin Talley implemented a Mexican legend/myth on the story. If you didn't know, ghosts are big part of this book, like HUUUUGE. And Mateo narrates how when he was little he was told the story of La Llorona. 

This book went by fast and it was a pretty great book. I'm happy and cannot wait for what Robin Talley does next. 

Robin Talley lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife, their baby daughter, an antisocial cat and a goofy hound dog. Whenever the baby's sleeping, she's probably busy writing young adult fiction about queer characters, reading books, and having in-depth conversations with friends and family about things like whether Jasmine's character motivation was sufficiently established in Aladdin.

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