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plumiette 's review for:
Ninth House
by Leigh Bardugo
The author name-drops New Haven iconography like it's no one's business, to the point where I was forced to do some research halfway through. Sure enough, indeed, Leigh Bardugo is a Yale graduate. Having grown up and worked in the area, I can always spot a Yale transplant by the way they feign intimacy with the city and its surrounding area, all while never getting much farther than Ikea or Jordan's Furniture. And that's fine. That's how it is everywhere - Boston natives feel the same about the half million college students swarming their streets. And, frankly, I can't even really call this a complaint. I liked reading about the place I grew up from an outsider's perspective. I think, obviously for the purposes of novel-writing, Bardugo has crafted a highly romanticized version of Yale and New Haven. I don't know that it's possible to write a book about an Ivy League without it being riddled with stereotypes and a certain sense of pretension. At one point, she claims that Yale is a far cry from California because the people at Yale wouldn't dare to wear provocative clothing or glitter. This is...so obtuse that I have to hope that this is just Alex's prejudice shining through and not how the author actually thinks. Obviously, there are glaring differences between California and Connecticut, but if you think glitter and clothing lie at the nexus of that...I don't know how to help you.
The last quarter of the book gave me whiplash. The author apparently couldn't decide on a shocking enough ending, so she just kept throwing plot twists at it until something stuck. I think that's where my main problem lies: there was no careful subtlety to the major reveal at the end. It was a piss poor plot twist because it was completely unexpected, so it felt rushed and random. I do wonder if I read the book again if I would uncover something I did not previously notice, but literally nothing comes to mind. The more I think about it, actually, the more I find that a lot of the mystery-unraveling plot points that appear towards the novel's close were really not incorporated well enough into the beginning. Whereas, other aspects were given considerable screentime, with very little to show for it. I feel like most of the novel was spent convincing the reader of how edgily smart everyone was all while accomplishing nothing in the way of an actual plot.
Regardless, I really enjoyed this book. It is often dense and fans itself up a little bit more than can be ignored. But, really, what else would you expect from a book set at an Ivy League?
The last quarter of the book gave me whiplash. The author apparently couldn't decide on a shocking enough ending, so she just kept throwing plot twists at it until something stuck. I think that's where my main problem lies: there was no careful subtlety to the major reveal at the end. It was a piss poor plot twist because it was completely unexpected, so it felt rushed and random. I do wonder if I read the book again if I would uncover something I did not previously notice, but literally nothing comes to mind. The more I think about it, actually, the more I find that a lot of the mystery-unraveling plot points that appear towards the novel's close were really not incorporated well enough into the beginning. Whereas, other aspects were given considerable screentime, with very little to show for it. I feel like most of the novel was spent convincing the reader of how edgily smart everyone was all while accomplishing nothing in the way of an actual plot.
Regardless, I really enjoyed this book. It is often dense and fans itself up a little bit more than can be ignored. But, really, what else would you expect from a book set at an Ivy League?