CAN I JUST SAY OH MY GOD, WHAT A WHIRLWIND OF EMOTIONS.

Ninth House for me was a book I was both excited and sceptical about as I have enjoyed Leigh Bardugo's previous books, but have not loved them all. I was interested to see how she would move on from writing for a young-adult audience to an adult audience and she did not disappoint.

The premise of Ninth House is that Yale University has lots of secret magic societies that perform rituals relating to portal magic, necromancy, ghosts and all kinds of things that go bump in the night. The societies are a little bit like fraternities or sororities in my view as they are select groups of students and alumni that belong to these eight secret societies; Skull & Bone and Scroll & Key to name a few. These are all then kept in check by Lethe, another secret society who is given funding by these eight societies to keep them in check. The main character Alex Stern has been inducted into Lethe because she has been found to have the extraordinary talent of being able to see ghosts without magical potions that wreck havoc on the human body. Alex's job is to help oversea all of the rituals performed by the eight secret societies and check nothing goes wrong. However, a sudden death on campus attracts her attention and Ninth House follows the grizzly tale of the murder investigation.

Alex Stern is one hell of a character. She is has had a dark, gritty and traumatic past that has clearly left her with deep and unresolved problems. She was involved with a drug-dealer, dropped out of school and woke up in hospital with all of her friends dead before coming to Yale and joining Lethe. Her body is tattooed, she seems unconventional and a little wild and I absolutely adored her. I thought she was a realistic character with so much trauma and so well thought-through. It's really hard to explain more about her without giving away the plot, but I thought Leigh Bardugo crafted an incredibly strong and interesting MC.

"They tried to kill me, Hellie," she rasped as she slid into the dark. That means I get to try to kill them."

In addition to the fantastic MC, the actual plot-line was so strong. This was not your typical "fantasy" that I expected before reading the actual blurb. However, Bardugo interwove the magic elements seamlessly with the horrors and the good bits of the real world. She did it in such a fashion that it highlighted so many moral issues in society: victim blaming, date rape, class hierarchy, gender stereotypes, drug use to name a few.

"Calamity comes too easily to women. Our lives can come apart in a single gesture, a rogue wave. And money? Money is the rock we cling to when the current would seize us.
"Yes," said Alex, leaning forward. This was what Alex's mother has never managed to grasp. Mira loved art and truth and freedom. She didn't want to be part of this machine. But the machine didn't care. The machine went on grinding and catching her up in its gears."

The murder mystery aspect of the plot in addition to the fantasy/real-world problems was also super clever. There were so many plot twists, little snippets alluding to the real culprit and the motivation. I honestly had not twigged on the final plot-twist at all and I think that is what really sold me on the book. The last 100 pages I could not put down at all because I was so immersed in the world of Yale.

"Do you know what my mother said?" Turner asked. "She told me there's no doorway the devil doesn't know. He's always waiting to stick his foot in. I never really believed her until tonight.""

Turner was probably my favourite secondary character who was actually heavily featured.

I also fell in love with Darlington despite the fact he was only present in flashbacks and I'm super excited for the next book to focus on him

. Turner reminded me a lot of all David Tenant and the kind of cops he plays. A little sarcastic, very straight-forward and very proper in his approach to the law, but also practical and not unreasonable. Despite the fact he wasn't always seemingly on Alex Stern's side he was a strong secondary character and I hope we get to see more of him in book two.

I think the only downsides to the book for me was the beginning, for some reason I always struggle with Leigh Bardugo's books at the beginning to follow all the characters, the settings and understand the plot lines. She always has very dense world-building and very layered character stories and I sometimes find that difficult to immerse myself in immediately, especially when everything isn't explained easily and gets unveiled in dribs and drabs. Nevertheless, I don't think it's really worth deducting a star from and the fact that I fell so in love with the MC and got entirely absorbed in the final 100 pages, so much that I was bouncing about in bed with excitement, it deserves the 5 stars. Thoroughly recommend to all fantasy, crime and mystery fans with the warning that this is a very dark and very adult book.

"Turner rested his gloves hands on the steering wheel. "I'm pretty sure when my mother was talking about the devil, she had you in mind."
"I'm a delight."