Ninth House [review]

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Published by Flatiron Books on October 8, 2019
my rating: ★★★★
Goodreads avg: 4.09 (as of 2020-05-02)
Spoiler-free review

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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.

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By the time Alex managed to get the blood out of her good wool coat, it was too warm to wear it.

One hell of a first sentence, and an easy way to reel in your reader. Set at Yale in a universe where magic is real but fairly well-hidden, I thought the atmosphere of this book was so well-done. I could easily see the streets of New Haven in my mind and loved hearing about the different buildings the societies had. I also adored the characters. Alex is gritty and a bit of a stereotype, but still fun to read. Darlington reminded me a lot of Gansey from TRC, who I loved, so I liked reading about him as well. Dawes was GREAT and I loved how much time she and Alex got to spend together. I firmly feel that Alex is queer and the chemistry between her and Dawes was [eyes emoji]. Alex/Dawes/Darlington OT3, honestly.

There were always excuses for why girls died.

I only had a couple complaints, really. The plot felt convoluted at times and I struggled to follow some things. Some of what’s going on is really complicated and I was confused about how some conclusions were drawn or what had really happened. I also took issue with the first sexual assault scene. While the others felt like they had purpose to them, the first involved the rape of a minor and didn’t seem to add anything to the book. It was clearly supposed to be the foundation for Alex’s drug addiction and PTSD, but it just wasn’t clear to me why another device couldn’t have been used. That being said, from what I recall it was relatively brief and didn’t take too much away from the story for me.

We are the shepherds. But who would protect them from the wolves?

Overall though, I found this extremely compelling and did not want to put it down. I almost let myself stay up way too late reading it because I kept wondering what would happen next and wanted to spend more time with the characters. I’m bummed I’m going to have to wait for the sequel, but am so glad this is not the last I’ll be seeing of Alex and her crew!

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My current 2020 Women’s Prize Squad Longlist rankings:

1. The Body Lies
2. Girl, Woman, Other
3. My Dark Vanessa
4. Ninth House

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