The Scret History meets Saltburm in this powerful twist on the dark academia genre.

Its themes of obsession, jealousy, dark magic, abandonment and class are deftly explored.. Meticulous plotting throws up surprising twists. The prose is gloriously accomplished. But what shines is the depth of characterisation that makes the story feel authentic and tense and keeps readers hooked to the storyline.

A masterpiece of writing and a brilliant addition to the genre that is surely set to become a bestseller.

I am forever searching for The Secret History-esque reads so it’s safe to say that the plot of Kate van der Borgh’s And He Shall Appear enthralled me immediately. And, wow, did it not disappoint. This dark academia novel is exactly that; unsettling, eerie and enchanting. This story consumed me: I felt jittery both whilst reading and whilst itching to get back to it. This trope is done a lot (I would never say over done and I will never get bored of it) but what makes And He Shall Appear a true masterpiece - and it is - is that it is uniquely different, both through its particular story, and some genre weaving, but also by van der Borgh’s ability to explore through our unnamed narrators own obsession, why we (I know it’s not just me!) are so obsessed with these types of stories. Privilege, class and education are explored along with jealously, obsession and relationships. The ending was superb: twist upon twist, none of which I had completely foreseen, and although quite sad, honestly, it felt very right. I know I read this in August but it will make the perfect autumnal read. And He Shall Appear is mesmerising, chilling and compulsive: a book that had me reading til the early hours whilst simultaneously never wanting it to end; devouring every word, rereading whole parts, all to ensure I’d understood the meaning, felt the moment and truly taken everything I could from this. 5 stars gladly given - loved.

I will surely not be the only person to comment on the Saltburn vibes here, there are definitely similarities, the main one being the obsessive friendship.
The NEED to be in Bryn's circle.
I very much enjoyed this book, it had me wondering a lot, what was real, what was imagined.
What was lying in the depth of our main characters mind??
It had its creepy moments, and a nice build up to what should have been quite dramatic, but I felt underwhelmed by.
Non the less, the final chapters put everything to rights.
A very good debut.

And He Shall Appear is a novel about a young musician's obsessive friendship with a fellow student, a charismatic magician who seems to tread a line between life of the party and dark power. The narrator, who remains unnamed, starts at Cambridge as an outsider, but he quickly discovers Bryn Cavendish, a powerful presence who does magic tricks like his occultist father. As the narrator is drawn into Bryn's world and away from the academic drudgery, he starts to believe that Bryn holds far more power than it first appears, and as the narrator tells the story years later, this power might be still lingering.

This book is immediately going to fall into the 'dark academia' category, and admittedly, for once it actually lives up to that name in some ways, as it is very much focused on a dark side of being a student at Cambridge, and the narrator's obsession with a particular musician lends it more of the 'academia' element that many books labelled dark academia seem to forget. The story is told to us from a present day, in which the narrator is returning to Cambridge for an event, but most of the book is set in the past of his first couple of years at Cambridge as he unfolds a particular story. As with many dark academia books clearly taking inspiration from The Secret History, he is an unreliable narrator, and indeed the book is preoccupied with ideas of the stories we create, leading to an ending in which we come to understand that there's more than one way of telling a story, as with playing a musical piece.

I enjoyed reading this book, with its accurate Oxbridge detail and the undercurrent of dark magic and hauntings that are always meant to be a little mysterious, and the narrator's obvious hiding of certain characters' identities or their exact fates is fairly predictable, but still works pretty effectively to get across how he is potentially rewriting the past. However, at times it felt a bit 'dark academia by numbers' in its choices, and I do find it hilarious that so many books in the sub-genre tend to have a less posh/outsider-type person suddenly finding themselves at a fancy university and throwing off the regular people to find some mesmerising yet dark people (having done the former personally, it didn't turn into any kind of dark academia set up, I have to admit). This book fits that stereotype and doesn't do very much with it, and I do feel like the whole 'outsider tries to make themselves part of the narrative' thing felt too predictable given that I've read other similar books that do a similar thing.

The obsessive friendship element I did enjoy, though I felt that the book's ending was the only place where this was really delved into very much, and there was never really enough space to say much other than 'you can obsessively love someone platonically' and then not really go anywhere with that. There might be something in the idea that these kinds of obsessive friendships are often depicted in fiction in ambiguous ways that could make them queer or not, and in this case it is meant to explicitly not be, and what that might mean for the book, and generally for how male obsessive friendships might be seen as weirder than female ones generally in pop culture and society.

Generally, this is a solid example of a dark academia novel and will appeal to people who like them, with enough accurate detail and sinister-seeming happenings to warrant it that title. For me, I found that it was often too predictable, not really delving into anything that might make it different or stand out in the category, so though I had fun reading it, I wasn't captivated by it like I have been by books like The Secret History or The Lessons.