Review: Ninth House

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alex’s life can be called many things, but not uneventful. She dropped out of high school years earlier and was hanging out with a drug dealer and working jobs that were never going to take her anywhere. When she wakes up in a hospital bed and is given an offer to attend Yale on a full ride, she wonders why and how. Her sponsors give her one primary task; monitor the secret societies that interact on the campus. The people who network in these societies are the future leaders of the world. Many will run Wall Street or become major stars in Hollywood. What exactly are these societies doing in these windowless spaces? Is there a reason Alex was the perfect person to intermingle?

Ninth House is the first book in the Alex Stern series. This is Bardugo’s adult debut and it is great. I think it is listed as a book for adults because of the age of most of the characters, but readers who have enjoyed Bardugo’s young adult novels will still enjoy this new series. It has the occult, murder and a journey of self-discovery. All of these features come together to make a tale worth reading. There is a firm ending to this novel, yet there is also a clear path for a series to be penned. I look forward to the second book to be released.


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