V = Vicious by VE Schwab

 

"The hotel room was pain and noise and chaos. Victor came to, dazed, trapped between the school lab and the hotel room, Angie's scream in his head and Sydney's in his ears. Sydney? But the girl was nowhere to be seen..."

The book blurb for this story, describe Victor and Eli as "brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys..." but that's an understatement. Victor and Eli are psychopaths who meet in college; they're both geniuses, top of the class, with the world at their fingertips and they're both hungry for power. Victor is a loner, who's world famous psychologists parents have abandoned him for book tours, leaving him to his studies in neuroscience. He doesn't try to fit in, he doesn't want to... But he finds himself drawn to Eli- a charismatic, athletic, pre-med student, who enjoys being the center of attention. Working together, they figure out that the key to having all the power they want is surviving.

I love an antihero story, and here we have a book full of characters who are all a bit naughty. Victor, dark and twisted, on a mission for revenge, helped by a computer hacker with terrible luck and a girl with a talent for second chances. Victor at least knows history will remember him as the bad guy and he revels in it. Eli convinces himself he's the hero of his own story, saving humanity with every life he takes, aided by a corrupt police department and a woman as deluded as he is.

This story essentially boils down to a male pissing contest with superpowers - you'd think that would be too shallow a premise for an engaging story, but I found it wildly entertaining.

I love how the timeline has been staggered, the story flipping chapter by chapter, between past and present moments, so rather than have the characters tell you their backstories, you can experience it in relative-real-time which keeps the plot engaging and thick with tension.

This is the second series I've read by the author (the other, Shades of Magic trilogy) and the writing style is distinctly VE Schwab. There isn't an overly descriptive prose, if that's what you're into you won't find it here, but there is a dark sense of humor and a twisted plot that demands a conclusion just as exciting as the story's conception.