A review by alyxbeau
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I am clearly not the target audience for this book, but I stuck through it anyways even though I should have DNFd this one and almost did on multiple occasions. 

I will put the reamainder of my review in spoiler tags to avoid people glancing at trigger warnings, but it will also contain actual spoilers. 
There was an absolutely massive amount of sexual assult covered in this book, and in graphic detail. There is a minor in an abusive and sexual relationship with an adult, rape, and drugging with substances to allow seeming consensual acts recorded on a phone. There is gory and detailed descriptions of pried open bodies as well. Honestly, those first pages after the initial chapter should have been enough for me to quit then and there, but I didn't. I thought it might get better after about 25 percent of the book, but the sexual descriptions of uncomfortable situations just got more frequent from that point on. 

At first I didn't think sny of it was for the shock factor. It seemed like the experiences our main character went through were described to us to explain her total fear at being touched by a ghost again after being raped as a middle schooler by one. But then her reaction to humans doing the same to her or trying to do the same to her, we're not as intense. They should have been. This is why I think it is all there for the shock factor now, and not included to show why her reaction was intense. Her reaction was intense only once. The trauma forgotten after that first incident at Yale.

This book is not for me. I stayed to solve the mystery of Darlington and got no satisfactory answer. I will not be continuing the series except to read a synopses of books 2 and 3, MAYBE.


 


Expand filter menu Content Warnings