It revolves around Lennon Carter, a troubled young black woman in an unhappy relationship with her former college professor, Wyatt, a slightly older, white man. During their engagement party, she walks in on Wyatt and Sophia, her only friend in Denver, having sex. While they don't even notice her, Lennon is devastated and leaves her own party, with plans to kill herself at an abandoned mall. When she arrives, there's an old fashioned telephone ringing insistently and when she answers, her life changes.
She is invited to study at Drayton College and is advised that she has been engaged in a lifelong application process, the final step being her interview at Drayton the next morning at 8am in Ogden, Utah. Things clearly haven't been going great, so she decides she may as well go for it and she makes the drive across country, making it just in time. Once she passes the awkward interview, she is magically transported to Drayton College, which is in Savannah, Georgia, but actually exists outside of space and time.
It seems Drayton teaches the art of persuasion - mental, physical and emotional - among other things, and Lennon has the potential to be a great wielder of the art. While excited by her training, she's enjoying the social aspect of Drayton. Her roommate is Blaine, a beautiful blonde she saw during the entrance exam, and the pair become fast friends. Lennon soon starts hooking up with Ian, a former druggie who shows incredible promise in persuasion and seems a bit ruthless with it. At least if you ask his lab rat.
One night during a student mixer, Lennon hangs out with Sawyer, a quiet student, and does some shrooms, only to open her first elevator - a magical gateway to another place... and possibly time. The faculty at Drayton really perk up their respective ears at this, as "gatekeepers" come along once in a great while. Like every 100 years or so.
Professor Dante Lowe becomes Lennon's advisor and she is sent for regular gatekeeping training with Dr. Benedict Barton, the man who interviewed her in Ogden, Utah at the start of all of this. While Dante, with his mysterious moth tattoos covering his hands and arms, keeps her a bit at arm's length, it is clear that sparks are flying between the pair. Not one to shy away from an enigmatic bad boy, she invites herself along on a business trip with him to Amsterdam, where she not only witnesses a horrifying aberration that transforms from a child to man to deadly monster, but she also sees a side of Dante that she almost wishes she hadn't. And yet, she wants nothing more than to know his story.
When the time comes for Logos College to select the elite first year students to join their dorm, Lennon beats out Ian for a spot, despite their weird relationship status, and she creates a mortal enemy in him. When a clash between the pair takes a tragic turn, students and faculty alike start to look at Lennon with a different point of view. Could she be more dangerous than valuable as a gatekeeper? Further incidents, including the death of a faculty member, lead Lennon to step away from Drayton for a bit, only to be drawn back by Dante, but a dangerous game is afoot and the stakes couldn't be higher, both for Lennon and Drayton itself. The startling conclusion definitely finds everyone in a much different set of circumstances than they were initially.
Overall, I enjoyed An Academy for Liars, but I will say that I was at least 60% through the book before I was really engaged by it. Once it hit that mark, things started steamrolling and didn't really let up until the end, so that's a good thing. There are some potentially triggering topics in this book such as suicide and child molestation, and there's a hefty bit of gore and torture as well, so if that bothers you, you may want to steer clear. It's not explicit by any means, but it does happen. I'm also personally not a big fan of the professor/student romance dynamic, so there's that as well.
Overall, it's an interesting book, but I can't say it's a favorite, unlike her earlier House of Hunger that grabbed me by the throat and never let go (bloodsucker pun intended). If the topics I've mentioned catch your attention, check it out.
