Book Review: ‘Voice Like A Hyacinth’ by Mallory Pearson

There are books that don’t just tell a story; they cast a spell.
Voice Like a Hyacinth is one of them. I didn’t really have any expectations of this book as I went in, just that I knew I was going to like it… I was not ready to be completely blindsided by it!

Set in the liminal space of a prestigious art school, Mallory Pearson’s latest novel follows five fiercely bonded students in their final year: Jo, Finch, Amrita, Saz, and Caroline. The Solo show, the institution’s most coveted artistic rite of passage, is approaching, and with it, the rising tide of ambition, fear, and desire. When a ritual is found and performed, it promises to unlock brilliance. But this is not a novel about wishes granted. This is a novel about what we give up, willingly or not, in pursuit of greatness.

Here’s the summary:

“Art student Jo Kozak and her fellow classmates and best friends, Caroline, Finch, Amrita, and Saz, are one another’s muses—so close they have their own language and so devoted to the craft that they’ll do anything to keep their inspiration alive. Even if it means naively resorting to the occult to unlock their creativity and to curse their esteemed, if notoriously creepy, professor. They soon learn the horrible price to be paid for such a transgressive ritual.

In its violent aftermath, things are changing. Jo is feeling unnervingly haunted by something inexplicable. Their paintings, once prodigious and full of life, are growing dark and unhealthy. And their journey together—as women, students, and artists—is starting to crumble.

To right the wrong they’ve done, these five desperate friends will take their obsession a step too far. When that happens, there may be no turning back.”

Pearson’s prose is lush, tactile, and brimming with quiet menace. Every line feels like it’s been dipped in paint and blood; every paragraph blooms with heat and hunger. This is not horror in the traditional sense. The violence is rare, but the dread, oh, the dread is constant. It lingers in the background like a bassline you can feel in your teeth.

The real power of Voice Like a Hyacinth lies in its portrayal of friendship as both ritual and ruin. The group dynamic is intoxicating, equal parts devotion and possession. To be part of it is to feel chosen, worshipped, maybe even transcendent. But Pearson makes it clear: transcendence always demands a sacrifice.

This isn’t a book obsessed with being dark academia, though the threads are there; institutions, obsession, ritual, art as devotion. We spoke about that on our podcast episode (which you can listen to here), but what struck me most while reading wasn’t the aesthetic; it was the language. The sheer, confident beauty of it.

There’s something deeply evocative and queer about the novel, not only in its characters but in its refusal to follow form. It slips between genres, it bends the rules, it reshapes its own boundaries. Identity and artistry are both treated as mutable, magical, and inextricably linked. I kept thinking about metamorphosis. About how art changes us. About how wanting something too badly might be enough to conjure it. Or destroy it.

Voice Like a Hyacinth confirms it: Pearson is a writer with range, teeth, and a voice like no one else. I read it quickly and then sat with it for days, not just letting it haunt me, but inviting it to.

There are familiar tropes here, yes. But they’re used with reverence, not laziness. Pearson knows the canon. She’s just building something stranger and more beautiful on top of it.

My only complaint would be that I wanted more time to explore this world and these characters, and the page count doesn’t allow for it!

But if you like your fiction heady, haunted, artistic and blooming with strange magic, this one’s for you.