Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Ninth House

Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

633 reviews

hrobles1009's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Overall good! Middle really lagged and the plot got a bit messy, but it picked back up and came back together in the last quarter. Excited to read the next one!

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kirnet's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

4.0

MAJOR TWs for SA, CSA, Assault under the influence, other sexual violence, gore, abuse. All of it, really.

I really enjoyed the prose in this, and I ended up really loving Alex's character. I found her really compelling and was happy to follow her thoughts and actions. I love how flawed she is, as well as how she struggles to cope with it. Her relationships with the other characters are also great, mainly Dawes and North. She has a lot of on page chemistry with everyone that keeps things flowing. The story is interesting (though I did predict every twist), and the world building was interesting, but my main gripe with this book was the pacing. A lot of people mention not being invested in the book until very far in, and while I didn't have that exact problem, I did find a lot of the info dumps pretty grating. The book also spends a lot of time jumping back to the past, mostly to set up Darlington's character, or to explain parts of Alex's tragic backstory. In my opinion they happened too often and were too indulgent, really taking me out of the current storyline and investigation. I wonder if it would have been better to have made this book the second in the series, to have the first one actually show Alex and Darlington's growing relationship and ending with the cliffhanger of

Darlington getting yoinked to hell

rather than flashing back and expositing. As it stands there's too little Darlington for me to actually care about him as a character and too much Darlington for me to not get annoyed at his interruptions to the story, even if he seems like a fine character. Still, I'm excited to see where this story goes and I plan on picking up the next one.

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amy_etai's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

4.0

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lovelyspleenz's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.25

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whatcheyreads_'s review against another edition

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4.0

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strawbkatie's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.5

i really enjoyed this as my first foray into fantasy! i know every 2nd review says that the first 100-200ish pages are tough and really slow to get into and i will agree, but the rest of the book flies by ! i’m taking off half a star because i found this quite difficult to follow at first, it was a lot of info dumping about the different houses and tbh im still not sure i fully understand how each house works and how they’re all connected but it was fun either way! there are quite a few (slightly unnecessary) heavily graphic scenes which i wasn’t a fan of but overall i loved this :)

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addisnow00's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-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

4.5

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uncica's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.5

This book is right up my alley. I really enjoyed it and would have given it 4.5/5 ⭐️ had it not been for the last chapter or so. I didn't (and still don't) quite understand

how Darlington had become a demon and, more importantly, how Alex had arrived at this conclusion.

It felt like Bardugo was trying maybe a bit too hard to leave an opening for a sequel (which has been published, of course). I believe I would've liked the story better had it ended without

Darlington surviving and becoming a demon (or something??).

That being said, I still plan on reading the next book in the series.
Otherwise, it's a really interesting story with a couple of mysteries, multi-faceted characters, and a solid magic system. I particularly like how Bardugo incorporated her fictional world within the real-life New Haven/Yale campus. She played off Yale's real-world secret societies quite well. Bardugo also made it difficult to predict the resolution.
Would recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy and mysteries.

Quotes:

He didn’t know how precious a normal life could be, how easy it was to drift away from average. You started sleeping until noon, skipped one class, one day of school, lost one job, then another, forgot the way that normal people did things. You lost the language of ordinary life. And then, without meaning to, you crossed into a country from which you couldn’t return. You lived in a state where the ground always seemed to be slipping from beneath your feet, with no way back to someplace solid.

Death words could be anything, really, as long as they spoke of the things Grays feared most—the finality of passing, a life without legacy, the emptiness of the hereafter.

Peace was like any high. It couldn’t last. It was an illusion, something that could be interrupted in a moment and lost forever. Only two things kept you safe: money and power.

...harmless people high on nothing more than their own pretensions.

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thisgirlreads_yay's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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kileyjojo's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warning: This book depicts several sexual assault scenes in detail.

This was a fun read. It was a little difficult to get into in the beginning but the middle to end was super suspenseful and interesting. The ending felt like it fumbled the ball just a bit but overall I enjoyed the book. It takes a while to get into it but the payoff is worth it. If you like realistic fantasy and the paranormal, this is the read.

In terms of the content warning, a lot of the SA scenes feel very rushed and used only for shock value. In the moment, they are relevant but they seem to just disappear and never have any other message behind them when all is said and done. They are all very shocking and it makes it very difficult to want to continue the read.

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