Book Review: Ninth House (Alex Stern #1)

Ninth House

Leigh Bardugo

5/5

I'm having so many 5/5 reads this year it's great. Ninth House is Leigh Bardugo's first foray into adult and I was extremely hesitant. Her books are generally pretty hit or miss for me, big fan of SOC and not so much of the rest of the series. This one was amazing though, believe the hype because it's one hundred percent justified. Galaxy "Alex" Stern is a freshman at Yale though she never graduated high school or got her GED. She's extremely behind her other classmates and she's held back by the full-time job of monitoring Yale's secret magical societies. She's also dealing with all these ghosts that have followed her her entire life.

It's not chronological in the first half. It flashes between her time with Darlington, a senior at Yale who was basically her guide through the whole situation. I loved their interactions and needed so many more of them. I held back on reading this mostly due to the lack of romance, I don't have a lot of focus and I love romances. Little did I know, there's kind of a romance here but also it's not a romance at all and neither of them really admitted any feelings beyond platonic. I mean kind of it's really dramatic and complicated and I loved it and need more of it. 

The secret societies were a little difficult to follow, similar to her classifications in the Grishaverse. Like I said, I'm not very big-brain and the lack of sequence made it a little complicated. Didn't take away from the drama of it. I love books where the protagonist can see ghosts, I don't know what it is about it it's just a great plot line to me. This one was no different. The dichotomy of the main characters, the friendships, the betrayals, they all hit me so hard and were so surprising. 

If you're holding back on this one like I was out of fear that it won't match up to SOC, you're missing out. It's not the same genre as the Grishaverse, it's obviously contemporary, but it has so many amazing moments. Bardugo brings her same amazing ability to weave characters together through tragedies and triumphs, nobody's perfect but everyone's interesting.