44063371._sy475_Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

Source Format Pages Publisher Genre Publication Date
Netgalley eARC 480 Gollancz Fantasy (Adult) October 8th, 2019

Leigh Bardugo has won millions of hearts with her young adult fantasy series. It’s no miracle her debut adult title was going to be THE most anticipated release. Since October, the book has tallied up a neat 33k+ ratings with the current average of 4.15 – not bad! Not bad at all! … or, is it?

Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all.

Ninth House – Leigh Bardugo

… huh, well, with this I couldn’t agree with more…

Adult debut, and yep, this is one comes with heavy trigger warnings: rape, abuse (both sexual and drug), death.

You’d think this sounds like a title right up my dark desire’s alley… and yet, Ninth House was a long, hard battle for me. Without pussyfooting around, I was bored, inundated with the ‘mysterious backstory’ of the characters and not really focusing on the details of the mysterious ‘secret society’ vibe, the structure of delivery didn’t work for me – it was back and forth for pretty much most of the book and all of this made picking this book up from where I left off feel like a chore rather than an explosion of excitement.

There is quite the mystery to crack in this book and there’s quite the backstory to the characters as well as the setting, but I simply could not get into it. From the start, I was waiting to warm to the characters – that didn’t happen, no connection, no matter how heartbreaking or intriguing their story. I was waiting to get excited about the setting: Yale, an ‘outsider’ being thrown into the mix of all those privileged ‘insiders’ and secret societies to boot who carry out some funky, magical rituals – yeah, that failed to make me excited as well – I don’t know why. Well, maybe I do… Feeling attached to characters is one of the most important elements for me… that doesn’t happen, the rest of the story just loses its spark for me. Yes, it’s a solid, waterproof and well thought out environment. It was simply too rich for me this time and if I were you, I would judge the book by reading it yourself. Plenty love to go around for the title around the blogosphere, I’m simply not part of the cool kids this time.

A simple fact remains- you will get tons of story for your buck! Whether you like it or not, I will leave that for you to discover and I shall look forward to hearing what you thought of the book! 🙂