Review | Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House is the first book in the Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo.

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.

Reread review! I'm so glad I reread Ninth House. It's been a few years since I read it, and with the release of Hell Bent, I wanted to remember why I was so anxious for the next book in the series. It was definitely a successful reread.

There's a lot going on in Ninth House, and it should appeal to a wide range of readers. There's horror, fantasy, dark academia, ghosts, mystery... This is a huge plus for me, but I can see why this is a negative for some people. It's a lot, and there's a lot to take in. Ninth House definitely builds up over the course of the book, but I enjoyed all of it.

Do seek out trigger warnings, though.

Ninth House is still the only book I've read by Leigh Bardugo. I have a copy of Hell Bent that I will be reading in the very near future.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can read my original review of Ninth House here! 

 

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