I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school's honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.

If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.

And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

Fabian isn't worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

Short and Sweet Review

Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia, are students at one of the best schools for magicians and they’re in the honors class. Every year the school brings in a devil to teach the honors class and the students have the goal to kill the devil by the end of the year or he gets to kill them all.

That Devil, Ambition is a very unique book and I don’t think I’ve read a book like this before. We have Fabian, Credence, and Euphemia who are all in the honors class and they’re best friends, so obviously the three of them want to make it out alive together. We get all three characters POVs and it’s interesting to see how all of them approached the process of having to kill their professor. I will say that the professor or devil is very nonchalant and is confident in knowing that offing him will be a hard if not impossible task. The Honors class consists of 13 students and each of them can try to kill the professor but if they fail he’ll kill them. Some of them attempt to do it and then die on the spot, others try waiting towards the end of the school year to execute their plan. Fabian is a top student and he’s smart and he’s put a lot on the line to even attend the school. He makes a deal with the professor and we see a lot of students make deals and it was interesting to see what kind of deals were being made. Credence is our math wiz and she comes into play with her ability to make sure calculations are correct and we see more of this when she comes up with a plan. Euphemia was the last character whose POV we got to read from and most characters viewed her as someone who wasn’t all there but in actuality she’s very aware. I was excited to read from Euphemia’s POV because we got to see whether or not the students would end up succeeding or dying. There were a few twists at the beginning of the book that I was not expecting and then the end of the book the revelation was as equally surprising.

Overall, this was a unique book and the dark academia was really well done. I will say the pacing was kind of slow but watching these students come up with plans and trying to execute them is what will really keep readers engaged. It’s worth saying that we shouldn’t get attached to any of the characters in this book. This was such a different read that I would recommend it to others, for the plot and the characters.