Reviews with content warning for Vomit - Catherine House

A student of Catherine House through their first, second, and third (final) year of the program. Just before admission they were involved in an incident where they witnessed a traumatic event, leaving them oscillating between catatonic mania and indifference.

Atmosphere 🫶: Claustrophobic, lost, ethereal with a sensory and emotional writing style.

Set at a secretive, elite academic institution in a remote area of rural Pennsylvania
Selective description of people, places, and things – lots of room for rich imaginings

Cred Rating 👌🧑‍🎓: Realistic and Magical Realism

Captures the angst and undertones of academia – jumping through hoops, uncomfortable limbo of being a "new adult", peers that are both moral support and a competitive threat, the whole maze of pretension, pressure, and potential
Secretive sci-fi feeling that seems purposefully underdeveloped, even magical. We don’t understand the science/magic exactly, how being a graduate allows for power and prestige, or how final the consequences of “failure” may be

Growls and Howls 🐺:

I get how this could be boring or too weird. Not much happens and yet a lot happens? It isn’t repetitive but also isn’t rooted in any specific plot.
The characters are strange…it isn’t that they aren’t well developed, but it’s that they seem like ghosts. They are likeable and I could identify with them sometimes, but they also seem slightly “off” somehow. I loved it, but if you aren’t in the mood or a fan of that type of read, then it could be disconnecting.
Dosing could make a big diff in the reading experience. I read it all one cold, rainy day. If I had to take extended breaks I can imagine being confused or forgetting where we left off.

Reading Journey 👌: Passenger on an overnight drive through a dark, unfamiliar place. Discussions, music, falling in and out of sleep, never quite being comfortable, lucid dreaming, wake up to the dawn feeling like somehow minutes and days have gone by.

Mood Read Match-Up:

Character-driven studies in isolated settings
Mash up of absurdist, magical realism, dark academia
Mad scientist sci-fi / witchy soft fantasy energy
Subjective commentary on academic institutions, education, and student experience
Speculative fiction filled with symbolism, similes, metaphors
No plot, only vibes

Vibes: 😶‍🌫️😵‍💫😎

Content Heads-Up: Symbolism around suicide, depression, and addiction

Format: Hardcover

😍 This was one of my Favourite Books of 2023

Content Warnings

mariebrunelm's review

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The house is in the woods. You are in the house. Welcome to Catherine House, an elite school that is completely free to the lucky ones selected to attend. In exchange for three years of intense studies and a lifetime of alumni emulation, you must leave your past behind you and get ready to start afresh. Three years, no contact with the outside world. That sounds perfect for Ines, who is on the run and could use a place to be forgotten. She doesn't really pay attention to the studying part when she gets accepted, but she soon discovers that the more-elite-than-elite program that made the reputation of Catherine might, you guessed it, cast an uncomfortable shadow.

I kind of wish I'd written this book. It's right up my alley with its secrets, fierce protagonist and eerie atmosphere, all done in the quietest manner. This is not a loud book moved forward by stunning revelations and huge tensions. It's one that crawls its way under your skin without you even completely realizing it. I love that the eeriness never falls into trigerring territory and that it keeps you wondering all the way to the end. In an interview reproduced at the end of the book, the author describes it as a "Gothic literary suspense novel set at a cult-like college" and explains how she took inspiration from Bluebeard, which I hadn't realised but makes complete sense. I'll let a bit of time go by before I decide if this one is a new favourite, but I'm pretty sure it is.

Last note: this book could be described as a much, much less weird version of Vita Nostra.

Rep: black, bisexual, aromantic main character, various queer & diverse secondary characters.

Content Warnings

f18's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

genny's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Okay, I can see how many people wouldn't like this book...but it worked for me! It reminded me a LOT of Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko. I never thought I'd come across anything that resembled that book. In both novels, the school doesn't serve as aesthetically pleasing "dark academia" fodder - it's a hellish trap that sucks the life out of its students and attempts to transform them into something otherworldly. We follow a passive student as she progresses in her (barely comprehensible) studies, unraveling the school's secrets and trying not to lose herself along the way.

The story is slow-paced and the characters' daily lives feel almost "empty"; all the creepy stuff happens in the background while the protagonist mostly floats on by...until things get too hard to ignore. There is a heavy gothic atmosphere and while we do get dreamy days wandering the school grounds, the students here are desperate, all trying to escape their own lives within Catherine's walls. I'm torn on whether all the snippets of Ines and her friends were necessary. I loved Yaya, though.

The ending is vague so I'll just headcanon that Ines truly shakes free of Catherine and finds happiness in the outside world. She reunites with Yaya in New York, I just know it!!!

Catherine House is a haunting look at how people can hold immense loyalty for an institution that may not deserve such devotion. And yet, somehow it's also a love letter to one's university days, an understanding of the nostalgia. Give it a chance if "slow and depressing" doesn't put you off 😆

Content Warnings

vigil's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

this book really worked for me because despite its marketing, because it, to my understanding, functions really well as a deconstruction of academia as a whole. this is probably why you see so many low scores from dark academia fans, who expected more exploration of that portion, namely the plasma mystery, and cultish behavior. however, the book is not, and has never been about that. it was about our main character, ines, and her journey. it is best understood as a character study on escapism, loss, and self acceptance, as you weave through an environment actively detrimental to you.

i think in another kind of book, it would have put the mystery first, exposing catherine, understanding the full scope of plasm, shutting down the schools, and then have the protagonist reckon with their own internal emptiness afterwards, remarking on how solving the mystery didn't solve them. catherine house, does not share this typical format, having its protagonist get out. no school or mystery, creepy plasm cult or not, can nor should be your whole life.

what is plasm? i have no idea. it was explained to me and i still don't understand, so i wasn't bothered when that wasn't explored because i didn't care anyways.

i loved the way the author got the atmosphere across so clearly with very detailed, but uncomplicated prose. ines existed in this "sideways" and detached existence, with the author writing in the hazy aura ines clearly felt, until the end, when she starts getting (almost jarringly) clear.

i will say, i think this book wasted a lot of time, but also didn't use enough. i don't like dark academia aesthetic so i'm biased, but the multiple descriptions of food, parties, buildings, and landscapes did bore me. there are multiple scenes in the book that i think are genuinely unnecessary and other technically not needed. however, i would describe this book as drifting along a stream, not building up to something bigger, so the extra scenes didn't bother me too badly. that being said, you can only half pay attention to this book and still get the gist, which i did myself in some places when listening to the audiobook. (which is fantastic btw.)

and i tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but i knew theo's ass was trash.

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