Book Review - Ninth House (Alex Stern #1) by Leigh Bardugo

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

A slow start but this story does not dissappoint. It seems to be the theme of the past few months for long awaited novels to be very slow in getting to the good bits. The world building was beyond thorough, and I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or not. The characters were fun and I really enjoyed getting to know them. However my love for the Grishaverse really hasn't crossed over into this novel's universe. Perhaps that is a case of having certain expectations from a author changing genres, and I understand that would be difficult. I know many authors use psedonyms for different genres to avoid this issue. Anyway the ending was worth while and I am glad I perserved through, I give this book 3.5 stars.

Thank you Hachette Australia for this copy in return for my honest and independent review.