Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Ninth House

‼️Trigger warnings definitely need to be published at the beginning of this book! If they could dedicate an entire page to information about the type face, they could have dedicated a page to avoid triggering or traumatizing readers.

This book has rape (including rape of an underaged girl), graphic murder scenes, drugs/drug overdose death, and a lot of violence and gore. It constantly reminds the reader of all of the gruesome ways that people can die. Some of it felt like it was just added for the shock factor. Somehow all of the characters just continue along like they don't all need therapy 🙄

Loved the magic and lore behind this story but it was much more graphic and violent than what I generally prefer to read. My bad for not doing my due diligence, but also their bad for not publishing any TWs in the book.

Content Warnings

emiliedr_'s review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense slow-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? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

kallan11's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

margog2310's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

one of the most brilliant books I've ever read, can't wait to delve into Hellbent !!!!!!

Content Warnings

unburnt_bela's review against another edition

Go to review page

The racism against POC people in this book it's astonishing—despite whatever good intentions could lay behind the plot.
Dark academia it's more than a setting, it's a critic toward elitism inside intellectual and cultural settings.
This book isn't a critic. To me, it's a fantasy story about a Yale graduated where "what if Yale's secret societies had dark magical powers, with very edgy characters as protagonists?"
And this is a problem that I've seen multiple times with fairly successful YA authhors: to have an adult book does NOT mean "watch how many trigger warnings I can sum up into this bad boy." (Trigger warnings that originally published weren't included in the ARCS giveaways).
The multiple heavy-topic themes are just thrown in for shock value, without any care to dive deeper in the consequences that would give respect to actual victims.
Needless to say, to read this as a Latina was so deeply hurtful I had a panic attack that made me stop reading with care and just spiteful sweeping across pages to read the ending.
Alex could've just been Jewish, coming from poverty, and NOTHING would've changed in the plot. For her to be ambiguously Latina it's just to justify the bad traits she has, and oh boy she has a LOT.

Bad at school
Enters Yale as a replacement, because she could have never entered by her own merits.
Too dumb to learn Latin.
Refer herself as "shit that sticks".
Drug addict.
And the root? All because her (Latino) father abandoned her.

Please. Spit in my face closer, Bardugo.
All the themes in this book just make up space of nonsense.

Because how it is possible that a book criticizing misogyny

has the big baddie as a WOMAN???

or that the obvious main love interest it's your stereotypical gloomy, rich, white boy? That discovers his attraction toward Alex

through a rape scene???

That includes a revenge scene reminding of "Spit in my grave" where Alex

makes the rapist eat his own excrement while she records a video JUST to show it to her raped friend and that just magically cures any of her traumas??

This is wild, man.
Plot-related aside, this book it's boring up the last third.
Bardugo it's an established author and it's shows: because to waste half the book in narrating things that already happened and that the readers are already aware of? Unbelievable.
Here the murder it's a setting to info-dump about the characters. A rather annoying strategy I've seen Bardugo has started to settle comfortably in since King of Scars after the success of Six of Crows.
The problem? I don't care for any of the characters in Ninth House. They're not charming, or witty, or funny. I don't care about their tragic backstories (TM).
Her writing it's very good, but here it feels snobby and over the top. One thing it's to weave the atmosphere and another it's to show off.
Anyway, with this book I end my decade-long relationship of devotion toward Leigh Bardugo's work. Once brilliant and refreshing, now coming crashing down since it's peak with Six of Crows, landing messily with the King of Scars fiasco, and buried into Dante's Inferno with Ninth House.
0.5 stars ⭐️, for "trying".

Content Warnings

eedle_cacleberry's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Content Warnings

aprilnleaf's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

4.5

Content Warnings

More...