Reviews with content warning for Confinement - Catherine House

Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

69 reviews

homebodywitch's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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mariebrunelm's review against another edition

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dark 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

5.0

The house is in the woods. You are in the house. Welcome to Catherine House, an elite school that is completely free to the lucky ones selected to attend. In exchange for three years of intense studies and a lifetime of alumni emulation, you must leave your past behind you and get ready to start afresh. Three years, no contact with the outside world. That sounds perfect for Ines, who is on the run and could use a place to be forgotten. She doesn't really pay attention to the studying part when she gets accepted, but she soon discovers that the more-elite-than-elite program that made the reputation of Catherine might, you guessed it, cast an uncomfortable shadow.

I kind of wish I'd written this book. It's right up my alley with its secrets, fierce protagonist and eerie atmosphere, all done in the quietest manner. This is not a loud book moved forward by stunning revelations and huge tensions. It's one that crawls its way under your skin without you even completely realizing it. I love that the eeriness never falls into trigerring territory and that it keeps you wondering all the way to the end. In an interview reproduced at the end of the book, the author describes it as a "Gothic literary suspense novel set at a cult-like college" and explains how she took inspiration from Bluebeard, which I hadn't realised but makes complete sense. I'll let a bit of time go by before I decide if this one is a new favourite, but I'm pretty sure it is.

Last note: this book could be described as a much, much less weird version of Vita Nostra.

Rep: black, bisexual, aromantic main character, various queer & diverse secondary characters.

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aisabel's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

3.75

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khakipantsofsex's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

4.0

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ashley_turch's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

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inkylabyrinth's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

4.5

Catherine House follows Ines as she gives up everything for three years to attend a prestigious and secretive school, deep in the woods of Pennsylvania. Set in the 90’s, the students of Catherine House are completely cut off from the outside world, and some of them start to think the school may be asking for more of them than they realize.

Full of weird, dreamy prose, I almost gave up on this book but perhaps like the school itself, it grew on me slowly and then suddenly I couldn’t put it down. I can see why this has low ratings, because it doesn’t fit into any genre, but I adored this slow burn gothic gem.

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f18's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective slow-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

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therainbowshelf's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense 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? It's complicated

2.0

If you’re in the mood for a slow, unsettling atmospheric read with an interesting premise and maybe aromantic main character, check this out! I didn’t end up liking it, though. It needed some serious trimming. There’s a ton of fluff in here that seemed so unnecessary that it took away from the story. Everything that did matter took way too long to pay off, and was hard to care about because of Ines’s detached haze. The college cult itself also just feels like what a high schooler things college might be like.

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meemawreads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

1.0

This is one of the worst books I’ve read in recent memory. The pacing is strange, I kept forgetting it was the 90s and had very little sense of the passage of time. The characters aren’t supposed to talk about the past so it’s hard to feel connected to them. The main character’s motivations make little sense to me, the plot is shaky, the dialogue veered into the unbelievable. What the author chose to go into detail about confused me, and I couldn’t ever imagine the house itself. I couldn’t get grounded in the people, place or time… so why did I finish? No idea. I just wanted something spooky.

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samarakroeger's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

this book was perfectly fine but nothing spectacular. while I like descriptive language, I thought Elisabeth Thomas overused it here. I do not care what these kids ate for every single meal, I'm sorry. I also thought the eeriness could have been ramped up a notch. this book is not scary, not very creepy, and not at all suspenseful (in my opinion). Storygraph calls this a "thriller," which is weird seeing as there is nothing thrilling about this book. Ines just kind of goes about her life at this secluded, insular small college, goes to class, sleeps around, is depressed, and gets drunk. she is very much a passive protagonist, which I don't mind that much but I can see where that gets very frustrating. she just kind of lets things happen to her in the way that a lot of numb 18 year olds do.

in many ways, Catherine House reminded me of The Idiot, one of my favorite reads of this year. no plot, just vibes. passive main character. the plot: mentally ill (and slightly delusional) mc goes to elite college. both set in the mid 1990s, although that was more apparent to me in ~vibe~ in The Idiot than in Catherine House. however, I LOVED The Idiot and thought this was just okay, and I think part of that is that the satire and humor in Batuman's writing was sorely missing here. Thomas failed to really make any sort of critique of academia and I couldn't really find the point in the book. you could say that The Idiot is the light academia version of this supposedly dark academia book.

anywho, I didn't care about the "mystery" and was not impressed by the reveals, which could have been much creepier. I don't really see anything majorly wrong with the book per se, but I certainly didn't love it.

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