Scan barcode
evelynnreading's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.25
Was extremely boringđź’€ The last 100 pages were good tho
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Rape, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Murder
mealexc's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
A book you won’t want to put down. The plots and twist of this book were wonderfully unpredictable. At first it was to follow the time change in between chapters but it comes to a cohesive ending.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Grief, and Toxic friendship
sarahcelia's review against another edition
1.0
I don’t mind an “I see dead people” story, especially when dark magic and secret societies are involved. Ninth House was way too much for me in terms of cursing, sexual assault, sexual content, etc. I read far longer than I should have because the premise of the book is so compelling. And for a little while the content that bothered me just seemed to distract from the narrative, not overshadow it. But it quickly built up to eclipsing the story for me.
Leigh Bardugo is an excellent writer. Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom are new favorites from my reading list this year. But Ninth House was absolutely not for me.
Leigh Bardugo is an excellent writer. Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom are new favorites from my reading list this year. But Ninth House was absolutely not for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Excrement, Vomit, Grief, Murder, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexual content, Blood, and Alcohol
Minor: Abandonment, Colonisation, and Classism
iworshipcthulhu's review against another edition
emotional
sad
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, and Toxic relationship
klsreads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Yum yum yum I love how polarizing this book is. For me, 4.75 stars rounded up. I had a lot of fun.
Starting with cons: Due to the setting at Yale, this book runs the high risk of making its readers feel dumb sometimes. Leigh Bardugo went to Yale for undergrad, was in Wolf's Head, and also researched the h e l l out of Yale's history to make a cohesive, believable backstory. The depth of information fell flat to me as someone who doesn't care about the architecture and alumni of Ivy Leagues. It was a good plot device to show Darlington's intelligence, but occasionally read as, "Look at how much I thought this out and how smart I am!" She toes the line between knowing how grating academics can be and becoming an insufferable know-it-all herself (I understand this bc I am a huge nerd, currently in grad school, and can be academically insufferable). There are probably a ton of references I didn't understand (I'm sure some of it was written for English buffs and Yale students). This makes the book a bit too long, imo. Also, the chapters skip around in time and I don't think that was necessary, though it wasn't too hard to follow.
To be fair, Bardugo's world building ability is unbelievable, and I thought all of her main characters were unique, real, and multifaceted.
Pros: Pretty much everything else. Fun magic system, spooky dark academia, ghosts, sentient houses, whodunit, powerful misfits, revenge, a bi (?) female lead, extremely developed world, and a twisty-turny plot.
Important to note - this book is DARK. Like, graphically dark, and sometimes very gross, and often sad. Check the TWs/CWs.
Leigh Bardugo is an excellent writer and I highly recommend this if you like second chances, dark academia, and magical murder mysteries. It feels like this book was set up to knock the next one out of the park - I can't wait to start the sequel!
Starting with cons: Due to the setting at Yale, this book runs the high risk of making its readers feel dumb sometimes. Leigh Bardugo went to Yale for undergrad, was in Wolf's Head, and also researched the h e l l out of Yale's history to make a cohesive, believable backstory. The depth of information fell flat to me as someone who doesn't care about the architecture and alumni of Ivy Leagues. It was a good plot device to show Darlington's intelligence, but occasionally read as, "Look at how much I thought this out and how smart I am!" She toes the line between knowing how grating academics can be and becoming an insufferable know-it-all herself (I understand this bc I am a huge nerd, currently in grad school, and can be academically insufferable). There are probably a ton of references I didn't understand (I'm sure some of it was written for English buffs and Yale students). This makes the book a bit too long, imo. Also, the chapters skip around in time and I don't think that was necessary, though it wasn't too hard to follow.
To be fair, Bardugo's world building ability is unbelievable, and I thought all of her main characters were unique, real, and multifaceted.
Pros: Pretty much everything else. Fun magic system, spooky dark academia, ghosts, sentient houses, whodunit, powerful misfits, revenge, a bi (?) female lead, extremely developed world, and a twisty-turny plot.
Important to note - this book is DARK. Like, graphically dark, and sometimes very gross, and often sad. Check the TWs/CWs.
Leigh Bardugo is an excellent writer and I highly recommend this if you like second chances, dark academia, and magical murder mysteries. It feels like this book was set up to knock the next one out of the park - I can't wait to start the sequel!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Hate crime, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Grief, Stalking, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Minor: Forced institutionalization and Xenophobia
blue_skye's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Murder, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail
agedmordorblue's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Fun read! I've not read much occult/magic realism before, but I quite liked this excursion into the genre. It took me a while to truly get hooked, but once the story got me, I found it hard to put down. The prologue felt a bit cheap and didn't necessarily add much tension to the story and it takes nearly until the end for the story to catch up. Overall it seems like a fairly straightforward whodunnit, but it remains enjoyable throughout.
The book throws graphic descriptions of stuff like rape and abuse at you kinda out of nowhere, so maybe don't pick this book if you're looking for something light.
The book throws graphic descriptions of stuff like rape and abuse at you kinda out of nowhere, so maybe don't pick this book if you're looking for something light.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual violence, and Violence
Moderate: Gaslighting
solina's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Lots of mystery and snark, with just a little bit of is-it-romantic-maybe-a-little to keep it fun but not too much if you're not inro that sort of thing. Super funny, with great characters you'll love. Lots of badassery.
Content Warnings
Minor: Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship
crybabybea's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
There are three reasons I love Leigh Bardugo so much:
- Her sentence craft is beautiful. She knows when to make emotions punch. She knows how to paint scenes. She knows how to include literary devices that feel inentional and powerful. She has soo many quotable moments in all of her books. She's even good at writing quippy dialogue which I think is something many authors struggle with.
- Her characters are intensely loveable as much as they are hateable.
- When her plots get rolling, they get rolling. They feel like a rollercoaster that never stops, with reveal after jaw-dropping reveal. By the time you reach the conclusion, you want to snap the book shut and start all over so you can see all the things you missed.
This book... did not hold up to those standards for me. I felt like her writing seriously declined here. There were a lot of issues I had with this book that made it hard for me to rate it as high as I wanted to. I think I would have rated it lower (or maybe even DNF'd?) had it been written by a less competent author. The issues this book suffered from really reminded me of Babel. That is not a compliment.
I felt like I got the point of what Bardugo was going for here. And it fit really well within the dark academia theme. The secret societies, the allure and danger of power and fitting in with the crowd, the way the powerful see certain groups as disposable. I really did see what she was going for. But I didn't feel like she pushed it far enough. I felt like she relied on trying to make things arbitrarily "darker", leaning into horror tropes that didn't work out well for the story she was trying to tell. And every bit of it fell flat for me, especially knowing what she is capable of as a writer.
I would say this book doesn't pick up until around 30-40%, and even then, the plot unfolds slowly until the last four chapters where everything is revealed. I think this writing worked out in Six of Crows, because the tension was constantly being poked and prodded as you followed the POVs of the different characters. Here, we have mainly one POV that switches between timelines in the form of flashbacks. Which again, would have worked had it not been for the weird plotting. Those two things just did not mix well together. I was also really surprised to see how the POV switching was poorly executed, considering the masterful way she juggled six POVs in Six of Crows. Here, both of our POVs use the same narrative voice, and it would have been unclear who was narrating if they didn't point it out themselves.
The plot was also dragged down by Bardugo's tendency to info-dump world-building and exposition. There were pages of narration and explanations of things like architecture, the campus layout, what characters were wearing, that got to be incredibly boring. It also got in the way of connecting with the characters. The only dialogue we got between Alex and Darlington were dumps of exposition and explanations about the different secret societies at Yale. So by the end we are meant to care about this character who I simply could not care less about because we barely got to see him. His few POVs were not enough to make me invested in his character in any way.
Alex herself was okay as a character but I felt like Bardugo's messaging got lost with her. Her motives weren't clear, and I didn't feel like she experienced any growth or actual hardship through her journey here. I liked her manipulative tendencies, but I felt like they didn't have any actual impact on the plot. I thought Alex should have a lot more agency, but she spends most of the book reacting to the things that happen around her and she gets saved many times by other characters. I also wanted to see her struggle a bit more. She doesn't struggle with her addiction at all, or with intimacy after her traumatic experiences, and her status as a biracial Latina from a poor background doesn't seem to affect her ability to fit in at Yale or cause her any issues within Lethe. I just felt she lacked nuance as a character which really disappointed me, because again, this is Leigh Bardugo's massive advantage.
For what it's worth, the reveals at the end were decently satisfying for me. The villain monologues were eye-roll worthy but the final scene was so well-written that I looked past it. Such is the strength of Leigh Bardugo. So I won't give up on this series because I love the author, and I feel like I was given just enough to be interested in the potential.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
There are multiple extremely graphic rape scenes, as well as extremely graphic depiction of drug use, both real-world drugs and the magical kind. Needles are mentioned briefly. Alex has experience, shown through flashbacks, with an abusive relationship involving an adult while she was a minor. This includes every kind of abuse and is depicted in graphic detail. She is able to see ghosts, which may be similar to the experience of those with schizophrenia.franknforter's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Murder, and Sexual harassment