DNF @ 55%

I picked this one up on a whim last night after reading the description and finding out it was about a gymnast training for the Olympics. I always gravitate towards stories that have gymnastics at their forefront, mainly because I was a gymnast my entire childhood (fuck you knee injury that made me quit) and I love reading about characters that childhood me can relate to. However, this one was kind of a bust.

I think my main issues with Out of Bounds were both of the MC’s. Our FMC, Brie is literally broke (like $100 in her bank account broke) and she has been training for the Olympics since she was a young kid. But she literally spends her money on so many useless things and fucks around in her training, not at all taking it seriously. She yells at her coach—our MMC, Erik—for correcting her mistakes and gets mad when he doesn’t praise her. She was so irritating. Girl, you are going to the Olympics, at least take it seriously.

I also didn’t like Erik who was a grade A alphahole. He was such an asshole to Brie, and I honestly couldn’t understand why she was so attracted to him? What happened at the 52% mark was also insane??? Mainly one of the reasons I DNF’ed tbh. Anyways, I love the coach/athlete trope so much (as long as it’s legal obviously), mainly for the angst and the silent pining and the will/they won’t/they aspect of it. I love the coach character who keeps telling themselves they have to stay away from their athlete bc they’re teaching them, it’s not right, ect., Literally none of that is present in here. Erik is literally fucking around with Brie the entire book and not even thinking about the consequences. Dude, you are literally an Olympic coach. I’d think that the forbidden aspect of it would double but none of it was present at all.

I thought Brie and Erik had chemistry, don’t get me wrong. Their fighting and Brie defying him at every turn made sense. But honestly because of their respective situations, I found their arguing more annoying than hot? Their relationship just ended up giving the ick tbh, especially Erik and his advances towards Brie. I really think the only aspect of this book I enjoyed was the gymnastics (which I came for so at least I received lmao). Even then, the training scenes were far and few between, covered up Erik and Brie (obviously it’s a romance, so I was expecting that), and Brie’s fellow gymnasts gossiping about her relationship with Erik.

I think I was just too technical reading this book, especially because I was a gymnast as a kid, and I did compete a lot. It’s just, I know how serious training for the Olympics and as a gymnast can be. If I was in Brie’s position today, I wouldn’t be fucking around so much and actually try to focus on my training. I think my main issue with this was just how immature both Erik and Brie were. Anyways, after reading this book, I realized I had read another book by R.S. Grey called Scoring Wilder which I gave 3 stars. My issues were exactly the same from this book and that one, so this will probably be my last book from this author.

DNF at 45%

All that has happened in this book so far is the FMC, Auden, getting SA’ed at every turn, and her supposed love interest, Midas, gaslighting her that it’s all for her own good. Literally made me fucking sick to my stomach. There absolutely needs to be trigger warnings for this book for graphic sexual assault, graphic rape, emotional abuse and extreme gaslighting. Absolutely nothing else has happened in this book so far, I’m snoring and highly triggered. Also Midas is an absolute asshole and I cannot stand him and the way he’s allowing other men to sexually assault Auden literally right in front of him???Idk if Auden is going to get with his goofy ass or not but I’m not sticking around to find out.

DNF @ 45%


Wow, this was bad. I remember when this book first came out, and the number of people giving it 1-3 stars grew by the day (which is why Catherine House is currently sitting at a 3.11 average rating on Goodreads…). Nonetheless, I still kept this on my TBR, and wanted to give it a fair shot. But, Miss Thomas I am so sorry, this was just bad.

The premise for this story setup is interesting enough; set at a boarding school named Catherine House secluded from the outside world where only top students get in. And yes, we’ve all heard of thisbook before. However, Catherine House puts an interesting spin on these tales, with some horror and thriller elements mixed in, (where the Secret History is more literary thriller, this is just kind of straight up gothic horrory) some light gothic writing + atmosphere, and also some weird shit™ (if you don’t know, weird and gothic shit are basically my trademarks around these parts).

All of this sounds really interesting, especially with our main character Ines who is an underdog-trope-character (which is probably every MC in a dark academia story, but I digress). She’s the bottom of the barrel, failing all of her classes, lazy, smart, but doesn’t apply herself. Honestly, this girl was too fucking relatable I have to admit. She also dissociates a lot, and has very little attachment to anything that’s going on around her. She just doesn’t care, and it made the story a little eerie (one of the only actually scary things about this imo). Like you really think a story with this atmosphere, set at an elite boarding school, where your heroine doesn’t give a fuck about the school she’s at, would be at least decent, right? But it just wasn’t.

I really think my main issue with Catherine House was the writing style. It was very disjointed and fragmented and it was very frustrating to read. The story was told in a stream of consciousness type of style, which I hate. I don’t like that type of writing. It always feels very wooden to me, and never very compact. I never find a story very woven together when I read this type of writing style. And I know this is a stylistic thing, and it’s probably not the books fault, it’s just a personal preference that I hate that type of writing. Also, let’s just talk about the amount of line breaks in the book. It was so fucking infuriating to me, and there really was so little dialogue. When there was dialogue it felt very stilted or it was very info-dumpey about the school/school’s history, ect., But usually, we were just in Ines’s head and her telling us about the mundane things she’s doing. She eats fruit, she goes to the library, she sleeps a lot, she skips class. Which is fine? But the plot is so slow moving, and it’s so much about Ines I just don’t care? Like, I enjoy character based stories, but Ines wasn’t really a character I enjoyed enough to follow through with this many mundane types of tasks. Honestly this book is so short, but so much could have been cut. Speaking of cut, this book has the longest chapters. 50 pages for one chapter made me want to kill myself, especially because I was not enjoying myself while reading this. And it was fucking boring. The writing was a snooze fest. I thought we were going to get a cute little gothic moment and I was literally snoring Miss Thomas.

I hated the writing but also the characters were widely underdeveloped. Ines has 5 or 6 “friend” characters in this story, and I cannot remember any of their names. Like that’s how bad it was. One of these characters is even killed off at the end of Act 1 and I did not feel a thing except queer-baited (because I really thought her and Ines were gonna kiss…). Like the only time I felt anything for a character in this story was for the pet that Ines and her roommate Baby had at the beginning of Act 1. That’s how bad it is out here guys, I swear. I could not tell you a single god damn thing about any of these people nor could I give a shit less.

I could honestly tell this book was a debut from the first chapter; the writing is hard to read, the dialogue is stilted, the characters are barely developed. This book desperately needed an editor. I feel like I’m being a little harsh, but really Catherine House has been done so many times before, it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. As both a dark academia book, and a thriller/gothic horror, I would definitely skip out on this one. There are infinitely better books with these tropes in them.

Gothic Book Playlist

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So, it was a bad idea. RTC


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I wanna see why everyone hates this book. (This is probably a bad idea).