A review by lrose02
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

4.5

Leigh Bardugo, as ever, is a Queen. I really thought I wasn’t a dark academia fan but this has set some high expectations for that genre. The lore building is amazing. You can really tell how she’s jumped from the YA genre with the Grishaverse to this Adult series. Please check the trigger warnings before reading as certain scenes caught me off guard throughout. I didn’t really know what this book was about before buying and reading and the blurb really doesn’t give it much away. Alex Stern is a morally grey character. She’s traumatised, savage and trying to make the best out of her situation. She’s painfully and admirably stubborn but it’s what drives the plot perfectly. This book has so many twists and turns that it really does keep you hooked. It was a slightly slow start as you try and wrap your head around the facts that are presented to you. It seems by the end that most of the plot points have been wrapped up, and in a way that doesn’t seem rushed as it often does in other books, but then the twist comes right at the end. I hope we get more of Michelle in the next book. The romance between Alex and Darlington is very much a subplot and I hope it gets developed a lot more in the next two books. Normally the romance is an aspect I’m interested it but it’s overshadowed by the plot and the world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I do want more of the duo without drowning out the other parts. I have a feeling Mercy or other parts of Alex’s normal Yale life will end up being dragged into the world of Lethe.
Now that Sandow is dead, as he rightfully deserved, it’s interesting to see how Lethe will survive and the shit show Alex and the group will return to after rescuing Darlington from Hell. Hell is also going to be really interesting in how it’s presented and what’s actually happened to Darlington. Lots of trauma for him. The plot twist surrounding Alex and Hallie was amazing and the depth there was to the murders had me gasping. That ability to absorb ghosts into her is probably going to cause immense trouble in hell
Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys modern day magic world building, something darker than YA, murder mysteries with lots of twists and just lovers of Leigh Bardugo. Not the full 5⭐️ purely due to the unexpected trigger warnings regarding SA and how explicit they were as well as the slow start but still a top book 
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