Book Review :: Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
ISBN: 1250313074
Series: Alex Stern #1
Published by Hachette NZ
on 2019-10-08
Genres: Adult, Horror, New Adult, Paranormal
Pages: 458
Source: Hachette Publishing NZ
Find at Hachette NZ
Goodreads

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.

Last updated on 29 June 2024

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The Story: Ninth House

The eight Ancient Houses of Yale University need supervision. Their dark magic, their rituals, their prognostications, their general secret society happenings. That’s where the house of Lethe comes in. Given the job to oversee the activities of the Ancient Eight and to keep the people of Yale safe, Lethe is a tightly knit group of people on a mission to keep the houses in line. When Galaxy ‘Alex’ Stern is scraped off the pavement and offered a scholarship (of sorts) to Yale on the condition she becomes the next ‘Dante’ at Lethe, she has little choice if she wants to get her life back.

“Take me back. Make me into someone who has never been done harm. Go as far as you can. Make me brand-new. No bruises. No scars.”

But it’s a lot more than she bargained for. While Daniel ‘Darlington’ Arlington is a great teacher, and Dawes is a aloof but a fountain of knowledge, Alex finds herself investigating the murder of a girl; all is not what it seems.

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My thoughts on Ninth House

What an intense book. It’s not often I move away from Young Adult books these days, but of course I had to pick this one up because it’s Leigh Bardugo and you guys know much I enjoyed her Grishaverse. I was really looking forward to seeing how she crafted a story outside of the world of the Grisha. And it did not disappoint, my friends.

On Goodreads, people have categorised it as both Adult and New Adult, and while the themes are definitely adult adult adult (there’s a lot of dark elements to this story), Alex is only 20 and the other main characters aren’t much older, which means it fits in New Adult too. But either way you categorise it, it’s not Young Adult, so just be super aware of that when you pick it up.

“All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.”

The story was, like I mentioned, intense. Alex is thrown into a world of dark, black magic, dangerous on all fronts. She can see ghosts (called Grays), but she’s the only one who can. There’s a murder and a mystery. There’s a Gray who has his own agenda and needs Alex’s help. Darlington goes missing. There’s drugs, there’s blood, there’s hauntings, there’s horrific actions done by terrifying people, there’s super big cauldron which heal you. There’s a lot going on. None of it is nice, and yet…

Yet it was a fantastic book. The story is told from Alex’s perspective, predominately, with a little bit of Darlington thrown in, and it moves between Alex’s first days at Lethe when she’s learning the ropes and getting settled in (as much as one can settle in in the heart of Yale’s secret societies), and the present day where she’s trying to solve a murder, work with the policeman who knows about Lethe is meant to help them out, find out where Darlington’s gone, and step cautiously around the Gray on a mission. Alex herself is a bit of a mystery, her own past a wild series of events. Darlington was a favourite of mine, and I wish he didn’t disappear so we could read more about him.

“You couldn’t keep sidling up to death and dipping your toe in. Eventually it grabbed your ankle and tried to pull you under.”

There are often elements to a book that one can predict, and while that was the case for Ninth House the majority of pages caught me by surprise, especially near the end. There was a major key part to the story which I did guess, but that didn’t make it any less brilliant when it played out in the book. It was excellently written, and it was really fun to experience Bardugo’s stories away from the Grishaverse.

While it took me a little over a week to read, it was a really interesting read, and I’m really looking forward to reading the next book in this series when it comes out.

Have you read Ninth House? What did you think?

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I received this book from Hachette NZ in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my thoughts, and all opinions are my own.