Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo is the author’s first adult novel, and the first fantasy book I’ve read in a while, and I couldn’t have loved it more!

While the book is full of secret societies, ghosts and magic, the characters felt so real that the whole thing became completely believable to me, and really sucked me into the story. And like all good books I felt like it was too short (even at 458 pages). It’s been a few days since I finished reading and I keep having moments of excitement about picking it back up again, before I remember that it’s all done.

I will say there are loads of dark subjects in the book so if you’re triggered by talk of drugs, sexual abuse, manipulation or death then approach with caution.

I read the first half via physical book (which you can get here) and listened to the second half as an audiobook. It was wonderfully narrated by Lauren Fortgang and Michael David Axtell. And, as a bonus, at the end of the audiobook Lauren Fortgang interviews the author and (spoiler alert) she went to Yale, the secret societies in the book exist, and the author herself was in Wolfshead. Oh, and if you didn’t know already, there is definitely a sequel coming! Grab the audiobook using the button below.

Synopsis:

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.