Review | Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House is the first book in the Alex Stern series 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.

Reread review! I'm so glad I reread Ninth House. It's been a few years since I read it, and with the release of Hell Bent, I wanted to remember why I was so anxious for the next book in the series. It was definitely a successful reread.

There's a lot going on in Ninth House, and it should appeal to a wide range of readers. There's horror, fantasy, dark academia, ghosts, mystery... This is a huge plus for me, but I can see why this is a negative for some people. It's a lot, and there's a lot to take in. Ninth House definitely builds up over the course of the book, but I enjoyed all of it.

Do seek out trigger warnings, though.

Ninth House is still the only book I've read by Leigh Bardugo. I have a copy of Hell Bent that I will be reading in the very near future.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can read my original review of Ninth House here! 

 

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Review | Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Daisy Darker is a mystery/thriller by Alice Feeney.

The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists returns…with a family reunion that leads to murder.

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…

Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.

Daisy Darker is a messed up book.

Daisy Darker is a story like And Then There Were None and Clue where the characters get picked off one by one. This is all in the synopsis so I guess it's okay to also say this in my review. I absolutely loved And Then There Were None, and I enjoyed Daisy Darker, too. In Daisy Darker, the Darker family is reuniting at their family home Seaglass. They are on an island where when the tide comes in there's no way to leave the island for eight hours until the tide goes back out. It's the perfect setting for one of these trapped thriller novels.

I saw someone on Booktube the other day say when a reviewer says they can't really talk about a book because it would be spoilers that means the reviewer didn't actually read the book (lol). That's a weird hot take, and you are just going to have to believe that I read Daisy Darker because this is one of those books that you can't really talk about without spoiling something. Maybe that Booktuber needs to read more thrillers?

If you enjoy messed up family secrets that slowly get revealed over the course of a book, I recommend you give Daisy Darker a try.

I read my first Alice Feeney last year when I read Rock Paper Scissors. I was anxious to read more books by Feeney and was really excited that Daisy Darker was a Book-of-the-Month selection this year and that it was getting such great reviews from readers that I trust. I love Feeney's characters and her twists and her suspense. I find her books impossible to believe, but I have a great time reading them and I don't want to put them down.

Daisy Darker is a thriller, but it's also horror–adjacent. I recommend it to readers like me who love horror and love thrillers and love reading those books that straddle the line as horror-adjacent.

4/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐★

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Book Review | Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

Blacktop Wasteland is a new crime fiction release by S.A. Cosby.

Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast.

He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.

Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying.

Like Ocean’s Eleven meets Drive, with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime.

Why Did I Read Blacktop Wasteland?

The early reviews have been amazing for Blacktop Wasteland! How could I not get pulled into wanting to read it? The majority of my friends have given it 5 stars and the rest a solid 4 stars.

The Strengths

I went into Blacktop Wasteland pretty blind outside of just knowing how well it was being received. Blacktop Wasteland turned out to be a really great crime novel. It was full of action and full of consequence, and I loved S.A. Cosby's voice.

Blacktop Wasteland had a lot of surprises, too. I'm certain I said "noooo" out loud more than once!

There was a lot of heart in Blacktop Wasteland. It makes me excited to see what Cosby does next.

The Weaknesses

Here is the part where I get purely subjective. Pretty early on I had Blacktop Wasteland pegged as a heist book. I am such a huge fan of heist stories, and I've been really craving them lately. I see now that Blacktop Wasteland is being billed as part Ocean's Eleven which is fair since my own mind went there (more specifically Ocean's Eight). I'm glad I didn't see the comparisons ahead of time, though, because my heist expectation would have been even higher. My mind kept expecting the plotting and the pacing of a heist novel but was being given a great crime novel that was something else altogether.

Final Thoughts

If you love a good crime story, I wholeheartedly recommend you pick up Blacktop Wasteland. I will not be surprised to see it on a lot of favorites and awards lists for this year.

⭐⭐⭐💫★
3.5/5 stars

Review copy provided by the publisher

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Book Review | Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House is a horror/fantasy 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.

Why Did I Read Ninth House?

Ninth House was a preorder based on it being an adult horror from Leigh Bardugo. I tried to stay pretty blind about the plot since I was already sold based on genre/author.

The Strengths

At the apex of fantasy and horror sits Ninth House. Let's face it, any time scifi, fantasy, thrillers, etc. intersect with horror, I'm at my happiest, but combining magic and horror is awesome and I'm here for it!

Ghosts are my favorite horror element, and Ninth House deals with ghosts in a way that really hits the mark for me in a way that I never see portrayed in literature. There's a lot going on in Ninth House, and the aspects involving the grays (ghosts!) were my favorite.

The Weaknesses

The timeline was a little bit of a struggle for me. Having finished Ninth House, I think the timeline structure was necessary, but there were times I had to think about where we were and what was happening. It took me a while to settle into the timeline changes, and I'd be lying if I said that struggle didn't continue to creep back up.

After reading reviews of Ninth House, I was worried about the pacing. I was so happy to be buddy reading this with Tracy because I expected Ninth House to be a really slow burn or possibly even a slog through the first half. I didn't find this to be the case at all! As I mentioned there is a lot going in Ninth House. There are so many elements being introduced and built upon, I do think there is a big progression that happens. I love when a book continues to build and reveal until it turns into something awesome. This may not be a preference for everyone, but my advice if your tastes are similar to mine is "keep with it!" In the end, I loved it all.

Final Thoughts

I loved Ninth House. It was my first book to read by Leigh Bardugo. I have a couple of books from her other series that I'm really looking forward to getting started on. Tracy tells me Ninth House is going to have a sequel so I will be anxiously awaiting that one!

content warning:

rape

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/5 stars

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