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A review by citronella_seance
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
3.0
At face value, Catherine House should be right up my alley. I love Dark Academia so anything that involves private, old, extremely selective colleges immediately puts a book on my radar. Not only does Catherine House check all of those boxes, it’s also a school shrouded in mystery. It’s surrounded by high gates that only students, staff, and faculty can enter. No one in the outside world really has a clear idea what’s going on inside.
Sounds amazing right?! Unfortunately, Catherine House fell a bit flat for me. I had trouble enjoying any of the characters, or even really understanding who they were as people. It’s mentioned by other characters many times that Ines, the main character, is “super cool” but I never really saw anything to evidence that. I didn’t see much evidence about her personality at all, honestly. She’s kind of into art, she’s kind of a bad student, she’s kind of inquisitive, maybe she’s kind of cool. I still don’t really know who Ines is as a person.
If Ines was lacking character personality, the side characters were made of cardboard. I honestly couldn’t tell you what type of people any of the side characters were, with the exception of Theo because his actions, however indirect, at least helped move and shift the plot and kept it exciting.
I loved the actual story. A college doing experiments on its students and studying a brand new, very new-age technology is a rad concept and I greatly enjoyed the few times Ines interacted with the professors and the director, Viktoria. But I feel like the story was stunted by how much time the author tried to fit into it. Three whole years of college is a lot to try and fit into one novel’s time and it ended up feeling rushed and curt. This ended up making the prose feel a little sophomoric. Parts of it read more like a middle grade book to me, but then in the very next sentence two characters will be fucking or a character will be talking about masturbating. It was a very jarring dichotomy.
I’m giving this book three stars because I very much enjoyed the concept and the college itself. I also enjoyed the ending, even if it did feel rushed. I found myself wishing the college was populated with students who had a bit more of a personality.
I was provided a free galley of this book through HarperCollins and NetGalley for the purpose of this review.
Catherine House is out May 12, 2020!
Sounds amazing right?! Unfortunately, Catherine House fell a bit flat for me. I had trouble enjoying any of the characters, or even really understanding who they were as people. It’s mentioned by other characters many times that Ines, the main character, is “super cool” but I never really saw anything to evidence that. I didn’t see much evidence about her personality at all, honestly. She’s kind of into art, she’s kind of a bad student, she’s kind of inquisitive, maybe she’s kind of cool. I still don’t really know who Ines is as a person.
If Ines was lacking character personality, the side characters were made of cardboard. I honestly couldn’t tell you what type of people any of the side characters were, with the exception of Theo because his actions, however indirect, at least helped move and shift the plot and kept it exciting.
I loved the actual story. A college doing experiments on its students and studying a brand new, very new-age technology is a rad concept and I greatly enjoyed the few times Ines interacted with the professors and the director, Viktoria. But I feel like the story was stunted by how much time the author tried to fit into it. Three whole years of college is a lot to try and fit into one novel’s time and it ended up feeling rushed and curt. This ended up making the prose feel a little sophomoric. Parts of it read more like a middle grade book to me, but then in the very next sentence two characters will be fucking or a character will be talking about masturbating. It was a very jarring dichotomy.
I’m giving this book three stars because I very much enjoyed the concept and the college itself. I also enjoyed the ending, even if it did feel rushed. I found myself wishing the college was populated with students who had a bit more of a personality.
I was provided a free galley of this book through HarperCollins and NetGalley for the purpose of this review.
Catherine House is out May 12, 2020!