Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am wallowing in despair, because if you asked me who should be the Queen of my world, Leigh Bardugo would be on the short list, no doubt. But this has been the most frustrating Saturday ever, trying to force myself through this book. If it had been written by anyone else, I would have chosen to DNF early on, but I kept hanging on to try to find more redeeming qualities. I thought maybe it would reach a point where it all came together and became awesome.

Unfortunately, this was a really difficult story for me to get engaged and stay engaged with. The characters are many and all underdeveloped, in my opinion. The storyline is tedious and convoluted, made worse by the length of the book. I spent several hours trying to convince myself that I’m the problem, but I really don’t think it was just me. All I wanted was to spend the whole day relaxing and reading an awesome book, so I brought the right attitude to the moment just didn’t somehow, in a surprise twist, manage to pick the right book.

So long story short, even though this had some moments that were really interesting, and I could see glimpses of talent and world building and complex and interesting characters, overall, it was not a win for me. Had this not been written by Bardugo, I probably would have DNFed in the first ¼ of the story, saved myself most of a Saturday, and awarded this only 1 star. The 2nd star here is for the moments of amazing writing and storytelling that do exist, even though they tend to be too few and far between for me.

I do strongly recommend Bardugo’s other books, to anyone who is new to this author. Definitely don’t start with this one, since it seems to be pretty polarizing, and it’s hard saying which side you will fall towards. I came in with some pretty high expectations, but I am truly shocked that this didn't meet hardly any of them.

The audio narration for this story is good, very clear and mildly emotional. It's enough to add some depth to the reading but not distract.

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