Review: Ninth House (Alex Stern #1)

Title: Ninth House (Alex Stern #1)
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Thriller
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Source: Purchased
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: October 8, 2019
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads 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.

The mesmerizing adult debut from #1 New York Timesbestselling author Leigh Bardugo.

Review:

This was one of my most highly anticipated books of 2019. It was worth the wait!

I loved the way magic and ghosts were brought into the university life. It reminded me of my time at university, and all the colleges that it was divided up into, like the houses in this book. There were real locations at Yale used in this book. It’s great to see images of these locations, so that the story is brought to life.

There were a lot of thriller elements to this story as well as fantasy. Though there were ghosts, called Greys, and supernatural rituals, there were also murders and lots of drugs. The real gritty underworld of drugs and gruesome murders, mixed with the supernatural underworld of ghosts. These genres blended seamlessly.

I loved this book! I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book.

What to read next:

Have you read Ninth House? What did you think of it?