Ninth House || Book Review

Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House was freaking five-stars. Six stars. Can I do that? Seven stars.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Usually, for books like this, my brain has trouble putting everything together right, though even though this was the case at the beginning, everything was quickly coming together by the middle. 

Me and my ADHD 14-year-old mind would very much like to re-read this book for clarity on a few things, as a lot of the beginning confused me with all the jumping around through time. I'll admit, it was difficult at first and I wasn't certain what was going on. For the first 10 percent, I was totally lost and in the first chapter, I thought it was some post-apocalyptic time and she was the last person alive or something. I have much experience reading books which don't make sense to me at the beginning so I knew that as I kept reading, I would understand more ant things would begin to click. 

Things did click, and it was amazing. 

It's crazy how Darlington was hardly in the book and yet I missed him just as much as Alex did while clinging to any hope he could still be alive. 

All the characters had such personality. Everyone had something new and something different to offer to the story and every twist was one I didn't see coming but should've known. 

This story starts off with our Alex Stern, a student at Yale with a very special power and a place in a secret magical society called Lethe. She sees ghosts, or as people call them, Grays. Alex has survived a massive homicide and a near overdose. Her best friend was one of the dead and Galaxy Stern was somehow the only one to survive, drawing the attention of Lethe.

Throughout the story, you learn about her troubled past. You learn about Darlington, the gentleman of Lethe, and his disappearance, and you learn to miss him and love him.

I've read a lot of reviews for this book to try and see other people's opinions and a lot of them were complaining about the slow beginning and how things were confusing. I feel like those reasons aren't good enough to give a two-star rating. People started it and decided it wasn't going how they wanted so they left it. They complain about too much description but I believe that was one of the best assets. I'm absolutely in love with Leigh Bardugo's writing style. 

If you truly want to experience this story you must push through it and gather what you can because I promise you it's more than worth it.

I was only mildly surprised to see the contrast between this book and Six of Crows, as I'd read the summary and knowing that modern-day would be very different from not modern-day in a fantasy world, I wasn't expecting it to be written as such.

The writing is somehow more liberating and easier to relate to while retaining and expanding that wonderful narration and imagery.  

The graphic writing in this book is both beautiful and horrifying. I don't recommend this if you are sensitive to a lot of gore, rape, drugs, and sexual assault.

I hope you all love it as much as I do

-Victoria

You can also read this on Goodreads here, there's a little spoiler there that you can see if you've read the book :)