Reviews with content warning for Death - Catherine House

Despite how long this took me to finish i did actually rly enjoy it lol
The pacing was good and the characters were good i just have liked a little more tension throughout and more info about the backstory

‘Nothing ever happened at Catherine’

‘I stared into the mirror. Days. I could see them all, all the days, reflecting into each other forever. Mirrors repeating against mirrors.’

‘You see the world sideways, like a stranger.’

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celery's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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avokaitotoast's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a solid „good“ book. You won’t be clutching your seat in suspense, but it definitely was interesting and managed to do dark-academia without feeling like every other book I‘ve read.

One thing that was frustrating in this book is that the main character struggles with very severe depression. She’s very apathetic and that effects the narrative a lot (since it’s in first person). She doesn’t really care about what’s going on half the time and is a very unreliable narrator because of that.

Something that I think could be a love it or hate it thing is the pacing of this book — sometimes months will go by in one page and sometimes it takes a whole chapter to get through a day. It’s very disjointed, but for me it felt like a reflection of the main characters mental health and participation in the events: sometimes time moves incredibly slowly and sometimes she blinks and days have passed. It’s fitting, and kind of cool.

About the ending: I’ve seen a lot of reviews saying that it was unsatisfying and it didn’t answer a lot of the questions the readers had been asking. While I agree with that, I kind of liked it? The unsatisfying ending felt very fitting. I liked that there was neither a bad ending or a happy ending, just an ending.

I feel like people forget that with the main characters mind set there was no way we were going to get a nice cohesive ending u less there was a ~oh my god my depression is miraculously cured and my whole personality has changed~ moment, which would suck and ruin the whole book to be honest.

The only thing that I genuinely did not like about the book was that there was a little bit of a „chosen one“ trope with the main character. It’s implied heavily by the school director that the main character is special, that they picked *her* to join the school. HOWEVER — with the way the school is run, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what they tell all of the students. We only get one students perspective after all.

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erickal's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This books mysteries weren't really built up in a meaningful way, so the climax of the book didn't really hit for me. Loved the main character's friend group, while the main character was a little too apathetic. Loved the diversity of the characters, for sure! If someone was looking to read a book related to this, I'd say read Deadly Education or Gideon the Ninth!

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danie_faye's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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