Reviews with content warning for Drug use - La nona casa

Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

La nona casa by Leigh Bardugo

1078 reviews

amarks's review against another edition

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klsreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Yum yum yum I love how polarizing this book is. For me, 4.75 stars rounded up. I had a lot of fun.

Starting with cons: Due to the setting at Yale, this book runs the high risk of making its readers feel dumb sometimes. Leigh Bardugo went to Yale for undergrad, was in Wolf's Head, and also researched the h e l l out of Yale's history to make a cohesive, believable backstory. The depth of information fell flat to me as someone who doesn't care about the architecture and alumni of Ivy Leagues. It was a good plot device to show Darlington's intelligence, but occasionally read as, "Look at how much I thought this out and how smart I am!" She toes the line between knowing how grating academics can be and becoming an insufferable know-it-all herself (I understand this bc I am a huge nerd, currently in grad school, and can be academically insufferable). There are probably a ton of references I didn't understand (I'm sure some of it was written for English buffs and Yale students). This makes the book a bit too long, imo. Also, the chapters skip around in time and I don't think that was necessary, though it wasn't too hard to follow.

To be fair, Bardugo's world building ability is unbelievable, and I thought all of her main characters were unique, real, and multifaceted.

Pros: Pretty much everything else. Fun magic system, spooky dark academia, ghosts, sentient houses, whodunit, powerful misfits, revenge, a bi (?) female lead, extremely developed world, and a twisty-turny plot.

Important to note - this book is DARK. Like, graphically dark, and sometimes very gross, and often sad. Check the TWs/CWs.

Leigh Bardugo is an excellent writer and I highly recommend this if you like second chances, dark academia, and magical murder mysteries. It feels like this book was set up to knock the next one out of the park - I can't wait to start the sequel!

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ta2dlibrarian's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

Mysterious. Magical. All- consuming.

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andrewav's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

2.0

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cataquack's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

4.0

You know a book is going to be fun if it opens with a map, so I got a real kick out of this book opening with a map of the Yale University campus and surrounding area.

I had a really good time with this one, but it's definitely an "add a star if you've ever lived in New Haven, Connecticut" situation. Extraordinary sense of place, both in the "wow, Alex is eating at Mamoun's Falafel! She's shopping at Good Nature Market! She's dropping lore about Yorkside Pizza!" sense and the "I can follow the exact route Alex is taking in my mind's eye" sense.

I really enjoyed the Magical Realism of it all, and the book oozes personality and flavor, but the actual plot is fairly workmanlike—the murder mystery at the core of the story just isn't that gripping, and some of the investigation and deduction really started to blur together.

And it's hard to say whether I actually like Alex; her personality is (by design, I think) really grating at times, but she's a really interesting choice of POV character. This book could have easily followed a more generic Yalie-type character, who gets to be a fish out of water just by virtue of being a Normal Girl discovering a secret magical underbelly. Instead, Bardugo uses Alex's marginalized identities to explore the divide between Towns and Gowns, a divide that might be the defining conflict of New Haven, in a way that feels naturally interwoven with the plot.

I don't know that I'm going to drop everything to pick up the sequel, and I didn't find the button it ends on to be an especially compelling hook, but I'm interested to see if it can build on this premise in an interesting way. All in all, a perfectly fun time!

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krista_timm's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A

3.5

The writing style was a little more complex than I had initially thought, however, the second half of the book captivated me more. Just be aware of the trigger warnings!

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