Ninth House

Alex (Galaxy) can see ghosts, which makes her perfect for Lethe House at Yale. Lethe oversees and helps contain the magic from the other 8 magical "Houses". But otherwise, she's not a fit for Yale at all - drug-addicted, tattoo-covered juvenile delinquent, Alex has a lot of secrets to keep.

Alex gets caught up in several murder mysteries. One murder is current with a bunch of potential suspects, and the other murder is from 100 years ago brought to her by a ghost. And the person who is supposed to be teaching her how to deal with all of this has disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

This is called a horror story, but reads more like a mystery/thriller. And even though it's categorized as not YA, it really felt like a YA book to me. There is a clear distinction between the "kids" and the "adults", all the adults are clueless or bumbling or untrustworthy, each of the main "kid" character's parents are invoked during the course of the story, a disproportionate and not believable amount of responsibility is placed on the shoulders of the "kids" and yet no adult takes these same "kids" seriously.
( )

I loved this book. I thought it was incredibly unique and adored the dark academia setting.
I really enjoyed the cast of characters and Alex was the dark bad ass queen of it all. I had really hoped to see more of Darlington within this book but it makes me even more excited for the sequel to see what comes next after that cliff hanger of an ending!
On the downside the book was rather confusing especially in the beginning. It was hard to keep all of the different Houses of the Veil straight. The pacing was also a bit slow especially in the first 100 pages or so but it picked up and had enough intrigue to keep me wanting to read further. ( )

My first Leigh Bardugo book and damn it was so goooood. ( )

Loved this book! At first I was little frustrated with the main character seeming apathy and lack of interest in the world around her but as the story progressed and I started to see her past and she starts 'shedding her fake skin' so to speak I liked her a lot more. She is very relatable and some of the scenarios that pop up are real things that happen in the world and I am glad the author didn't shy away from writing it. It had a nice little plot twist at the end that opens the book up to a sequel that I will absolutely read as soon as it comes out. ( )

Suffers from the romanticization of college life that many, many similar novels do. We would never tolerate a novel that, say romanticized marriage or childhood to this degree. But colleges are apparently still magic, in spite of their rather humble, drab, stupid, bathetic, victimizing reality.

But so be that. I wish young writers would stop setting novels a thinly-veiled version of Hogwarts U, but . . .

Otherwise, pretty damn good. The main character is appropriately inscrutable and difficult. The scenario is . . . fantastic, but this is a fantasy novel. And is is fairly well carried out.

And there is a . . . freshness? Something about Bardugo's approach here that feels like something that not just paint-by-numbers. I'll read another, and I have high hopes it'll be damn good. ( )