Reviews with content warning for Death - Catherine House

If you’re in the mood for a slow, unsettling atmospheric read with an interesting premise and maybe aromantic main character, check this out! I didn’t end up liking it, though. It needed some serious trimming. There’s a ton of fluff in here that seemed so unnecessary that it took away from the story. Everything that did matter took way too long to pay off, and was hard to care about because of Ines’s detached haze. The college cult itself also just feels like what a high schooler things college might be like.

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samarakroeger's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

this book was perfectly fine but nothing spectacular. while I like descriptive language, I thought Elisabeth Thomas overused it here. I do not care what these kids ate for every single meal, I'm sorry. I also thought the eeriness could have been ramped up a notch. this book is not scary, not very creepy, and not at all suspenseful (in my opinion). Storygraph calls this a "thriller," which is weird seeing as there is nothing thrilling about this book. Ines just kind of goes about her life at this secluded, insular small college, goes to class, sleeps around, is depressed, and gets drunk. she is very much a passive protagonist, which I don't mind that much but I can see where that gets very frustrating. she just kind of lets things happen to her in the way that a lot of numb 18 year olds do.

in many ways, Catherine House reminded me of The Idiot, one of my favorite reads of this year. no plot, just vibes. passive main character. the plot: mentally ill (and slightly delusional) mc goes to elite college. both set in the mid 1990s, although that was more apparent to me in ~vibe~ in The Idiot than in Catherine House. however, I LOVED The Idiot and thought this was just okay, and I think part of that is that the satire and humor in Batuman's writing was sorely missing here. Thomas failed to really make any sort of critique of academia and I couldn't really find the point in the book. you could say that The Idiot is the light academia version of this supposedly dark academia book.

anywho, I didn't care about the "mystery" and was not impressed by the reveals, which could have been much creepier. I don't really see anything majorly wrong with the book per se, but I certainly didn't love it.

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yaizacanopoli's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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gravesandyearning's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

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genny's review

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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 😆

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vigil's review against another edition

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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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jjames_mal's review against another edition

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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

3.0

Yet another dark academia that I chose to pick up. This book follows Ines, who is accepted to a prestigious, secretive school, Catherine House, where students go to study completely cut off from the entire world for three years.
I was really into this book for maybe the first half. Everything was super tense and mysterious, and I found it very interesting to learn about this creepy school. But the book just kept going. And going. I legit didn't think the author was going to spend most of the book describing several YEARS of students taking classes, with only a handful of sentences in every other chapter that moved the plot forward, but that's exactly what happened. (Maybe this is just a facet of dark academia as a genre, but I am not a fan).
I especially found this annoying because I actually really liked the plot. I liked the mystery and the discovery. The characters were interesting, and I liked how they developed. The writing style was pretty good, and I think Elisabeth Thomas really nailed the atmosphere. But ultimately that wasn't enough for me to be able to keep my attention on this book. It honestly took me months to finish. And even though I liked it overall, with just the amount of tedium I went through, it became a sometimes interesting but mostly mediocre read.

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callikat's review

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dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The premise is very cool, I love dark academia books, but the pacing was very slow, and I didn't get a good sense of the characters (the MC has a group of friends, but it all felt very one-note). I also could not stand the protagonist (Ines); she was just so apathetic and not in an interesting way, she was just dull. The main thing about her is how stunningly beautiful she was (except her teeth lol??); like that's the only thing anyone ever said about her, that and how lazy she is. I think I would have liked the book more if it hadn't been so slow and if I actually liked the protagonist. Also I just did not understand a huge chunk of the book, which I think affected my rating

I still have no idea wtf plasm is, is it like stem cells or something? I just did not understand, I would have liked more info on it. I also do not understand when Theo betrayed Ines, there's just so much of it that didn't make sense.

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