Ines Murillo is a first-year at Catherine House, a prestigious but unusual college tucked deep in the woods of Pennsylvania. The admissions process is extremely selective, and both rigorous and demanding. It's entirely unclear what they're looking for, beyond intelligence, but fortunately for Ines, she has whatever it is, since the world outside suddenly seems like something from which she has to escape. Once she gets there, though, she seems intent on continuing with the debauchery that got her into trouble in the first place. She sleeps around, drinks too much (to be fair, wine seems to flow freely at all times), and skips class. Can anything convince her to turn things around? And what's really going on at Catherine anyway?

Reading the blurb for this book, which describes a secretive school that graduates powerful people, immediately made me think of that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the fraternity whose members got their power from a demon in their basement to whom they had to offer human sacrifices. So, here's a spoiler: there's no demon in the basement of Catherine House. What there is, isn't quite clear. It has something to do with a "new material" called "plasm" which, if I understood correctly somehow allows all things to be connected. The science behind it wasn't all that important to me.

Rather than the specifics of what's going on in the lab, this book is anchored by the atmosphere of the school. Full of lush descriptions of damp rooms with peeling wallpaper and mismatched furniture and meals made of strange combinations of food, the sense of something a step beyond shabby gentility emerges. Add to that some students who are, shall we say, very focused on plasm, and one gets a decidedly gothic feel.

For readers who enjoy a sense of nervous dread about what happens on the next page, this book will pull you to the end, while you nervously look over your shoulder.

Any books that is seductive, gothic, and academic is automatically going to be put in comparison to The Secret History, and it's going to be a tough row to hoe, because it's one of my all time favorite books. Still, I'm always eager to read books aiming for that vibe.

When I started reading this, though, it didn't seem like it was going for a Secret History vibe after all, and I was more in mind of Get Out, where there's a kind of B-movie, mad scientist angle to the gothic, with a heaping dose of social commentary. And again, I adore that movie so I'm eager to see where this is going.

And the result was, to me, not that successful for a couple of reasons. One, if I'm supposed to be seduced by this secretive elite school, it's tough when the POV main character is so aloof and too-cool-for-school. Aloof was the word that came to mind the whole time I was reading this, when what I wanted was seduction.

The way that the students at this school are meant to shed their pasts and never speak of them means that it's very difficult to get to know them as characters, and it's hard to understand how they were seduced by this school.

I think this book is trying to do something allegorical, and the best I can come up with is, like, something something STEM fields, something something marginalized students, something something brutal cloistered ivory towers. Maybe it was too subtle for me?

All that said, I still enjoyed reading this book. It's brisk, the prose was engaging, I was along for the ride.

***Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing and ARC in exchange for my honest review.***

This book wasn't for me. Any book that takes an entire paragraph to describe a sandwich isn't going to my book of choice.

Believe me when I tell you that I tried to like this. I really, really did but I'm at 60% and I just can not force myself to keep reading this. For whatever reason my brain is struggling to understand what any of this is about. There is a lot of eating, drinking, nudity, and casual sex. I normally don't rate a DNF but I read over half of this son of a b and I feel that was enough to qualify a rating.

"You are in the house and the house is in the woods. The woods are in the house. The stairs are in the house. Down the stairs is the hallway, and at the end of the hallway is the ballroom. The ballroom is in the house. You are in the house and the house is in you." = um, whaaat? 🤨

"You are in the house and the house is in today. Today is not a moment. Today is not a point. Today is an infinite area. Today is forever. Everything that has happened and that will ever happen is now. Everything that has been and will be is here. And everything is good. Everything is fine. You are not sad. You are not afraid. You are not hateful. Because you are here. You are here. You are inside. And you are ready." = Ready to throw my kindle at the wall. 😒

"Your hands are on the table. The table is in the hall, across the yard, in the house. The house is in the woods. In the woods, across the yard, in your hands, is the cup. The cup is in your hands. Your hands are in the house." = My brain hurts 😵

Anyhoo I tried. Maybe I will save others some valuable reading time. Also, according to other reviewers the end brings no resolution so, yeah.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Love me a spooky tale. I'll definitely have to re-read this one in October when the leaves change. It will go well with that Salem ambiance!

I would like to thank NetGalley, HarperCollins Publishers, and author Elisabeth Thomas for providing me with an ARC of this novel!

Catherine House is… An experience. It’s unsettling, but I think that’s the whole point. It’s dark, strange, and definitely not everybody’s cup of tea. This is a very slow-paced novel; like you’re descending down into a dark, creepy basement, afraid of what’s going to jump out at you. But with every step you take, things just get weirder. The characters aren’t likable, and sometimes you just end up confused. If you enjoy feeling like you’re suffering from sleep paralysis as your worst nightmare comes at you in slow motion, grab this book on May 12. And good luck sleeping afterward.

Thank you to those named above for the chance to read and review this ARC!

I’m having trouble reviewing this book, as my experience reading it was just… odd. The concept behind it was interesting, but I don’t think that it was executed the right way.

For one thing, the atmosphere of the story was disappointingly underdeveloped. It lacked the creepiness/eerieness that I expected it to have, being a mysterious, ultra-exclusive school and all. Something about the setting just fell flat, and that was very disappointing to me. The whole reason why I was excited to read this book was because of its creepy boarding school vibes, so naturally, when the school itself was not creepy at all, I felt extremely let down.

The book is marketed as a mystery, but it didn’t feel like a mystery at all. There was no suspense, no creepiness, no buildup of tension or anxiety… nothing. All of the big events in the plot weren’t written to be exciting. For example, the supposed death of one of the main characters was written in such a way that made it seem like “no big deal”. I had to reread the page and ask myself, she just died, right? because I was so confused by the way the author described the event.

The pacing of this book was also something I had trouble enjoying. I viewed it as a pretty bad sign when the plot still hadn’t picked up by the time I was half way through the book. Like I said, there was no excitement or suspense to keep me invested in the plot. The narration was very bland as well, and Ines’s perspective failed to pull me into the story. I don’t want to say Ines’s character was boring or underdeveloped, because it wasn’t. But I really wish more details had been provided about who she was before coming to Catherine House. We’re given very little information about her past, so it’s hard to get a good grasp on the type of person she is.

It might just be my own personal taste, but I really disliked the author’s writing style. It felt very choppy, and there was no flow to the story at all. We would get these random flashbacks to critical events in Ines’s past, and then they wouldn’t be brought up again for another hundred pages.

Speaking of which, after reading the book, I felt like there were a lot of loose ends that hadn’t been tied up. There were many plot holes that hadn’t been completely explained, so naturally, I was left with many questions. Also, there was this huge event that was brought up multiple times in the story that was never really resolved. I don’t even see why the author bothered adding it to the book if she wasn’t going to clear it up at the end.

Ines’s character arc as a whole felt incomplete. Her relationships with other characters hadn’t been wrapped up, nor had her own personal journey. The ending itself was very unsatisfying and anticlimatic, which was another huge disappointment.

Taking everything into consideration, Catherine House was a pretty big let down. The plot had so much potential to be fantastic, but ultimately it failed to deliver. If you’re looking for a book set at a mysterious, ultra-exclusive school, I’m sure there are others out there more interesting than this one.

Sadly, this book was simply not for me.

So this book. I read it all in a single sitting, and I’m really still trying to gather my thoughts and opinions about it. As soon as I finished, I thought “5 stars”, no doubt. As you can see, I’ve lowered that to 3.5 stars, albeit reluctantly.

This is a story about a girl in a house. She and her peers cannot leave; they can have no connection to the outside world. They have chosen, and been chosen by, Catherine House for one reason or another. They are there to learn, and work hard, and excel in a rigorous interdisplinary education. This is dark academia at its most oblique; it is moody and mean and introspective.

I will warn that this book put me in a funk. The main character is pretty severely depressed. Her environment is completely toxic and her thoughts tend to pull her deeper into her surreal and nightmarelike state of mind. It felt extremely real, which was both the highest achievement of the novel and the biggest trigger warning. It felt especially relevant in this strange time in the world right now, where the days are bleeding together and the passage of time is marked only by when our bodies need to eat.

I’d like to talk more about the introspective tone I mentioned in the previous paragraph. In the book, one of the characters describes the main protagonist, Ines, as having a “sideways” perspective of the world, although she wasn’t particularly academically intelligent. I think that applies to the book itself, in a strange way. Ines takes us through the story in a haze of depression and drunken glee; she overlooks important things and focuses intently on insignificant details. We learn about the setting, the all-powerful Catherine House, in small bits and pieces as Ines pores over details about wallpaper or bouncy houses. No writing in this book is what you will expect it to be. There is nothing typical about the dialogue or the tone or the plot or the characters. It is strange because it seems like everything we learned felt so trivial, but when added together, the details form a more complete whole than most other books can hope to achieve. We know the characters by their quirks and mannerisms instead of the color of their eyes or where they are from.

This book feels like the strange nostalgia of dusk near the end of summer, or the unsettling emptiness of an airport early in the morning. It’s driving down a deserted road in the night or returning to a temporary home when traveling abroad. It’s not that the book described these feelings, exactly, but the emotions it made me feel were similar. It was rich and all-encompassing, a beautiful sort of sadness.

Where the book is, I’d say, nearly flawless in terms of atmosphere, it falls a bit short when it comes to the plot itself. It is a bit mysterious and strange, but quite predictable, even as someone who doesn’t read a lot of thriller-type novels. This is why the star-rating has been reduced. Honestly, I don’t mind books that are all moodiness and little plot (see also: my complete devotion to Murakami), but for the sake of this being advertised around a “dark truth”, I think it won’t quite meet some readers’ expectations.

This review ended up being several paragraphs longer than I intended, so if you made it all the way here, thank you for sticking with me. This book made me feel icky and sad, and I really loved it for that. It’s been a while since a book has made me feel so deeply, and as a reader, I don’t care how dark those feelings are.

I would highly recommend this to fans of Murakami. A few other points of comparison I can offer are The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin and (strangely enough) Fallen by Lauren Kate, with a dash of Roshani Chokshi’s beautiful prose.

There was not one single likeable character in this book. The Catherine House was a creepy place that I would normally enjoy reading about, if I could take the journey with at least one interesting character.

I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the The Book Club Girls & NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

A secluded, mysterious school lures the best, brightest & most damaged students with the promise of free tuition, a life changing education, & the keys to the world upon graduation ... but Catherine House is more than it seems. Ines is running from her mysterious past right into the arms of Catherine House but the strange atmosphere & questionable practices make her question her place in the school. When tragedy strikes Ines begins to put together the oddities & clues to uncover the mystery of Catherine House. Solving this mystery will come at a price.

I love Gothic mystery & suspense as a genre & boy, did this book deliver. The world building in this novel is on a whole other level. She skillfully captured the feeling of foreboding & oppression that was key to the story. Her descriptive prose was so perfect you could smell the residence halls & feel the summer heat as you read.
With its decaying opulence, enigmatic professors, & air of mystery Catherine House itself was probably the best written character in the entire book.

Where the book came up short for me was in the human characters. Ines is difficult to the point of almost being impossible to like. The decision to withhold her past, save for a few tantalizing details, was inspired but her personality came off as more petulant than damaged. More insufferable than savable. I had a lot of trouble being invested in her journey because I disliked her so completely. Every time she wasted a chance someone was there to offer her another one ... until the end I never really felt that she was in any kind of peril because she had been treated as such a golden girl the entire time. She'd have to really mess up to be in trouble right? Well, she messed up & it was big, but I never really followed why it was such a big deal. It made the climax of the story kind of a let down for me.

I did however love the characters of Yaya & Viktoria - I desperately wanted to know more about them & it never happened. Yaya is a friend of Ines', fun-loving & passionate she is a force to be reckoned with & doesn't feel at home at Catherine House. She finds ways to retain her sense of normality in the topsy-turvy world of Catherine while she dreams & plans her life outside of the school. Viktoria is the school's director, a former Catherine student, & a complete mystery. What was she outside of Catherine? How old is she? What is her final agenda? What is her connection to Ines? You never get any answers. Sometimes leaving your audience questioning is good, but when you leave them with nothing but questions it can be frustrating ... and I was very frustrated.

Overall a solid book with some problematic areas but I enjoyed it as a whole. I know my rating says a 3 but it's really more a 3.5 if I'm honest. This is the authors first novel & it's exceptionally strong, I really look forward to more from this author & think she is one to keep your eye on.

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins for this ARC. This book was not something I would normally read but I was looking forward to something different. This was an interesting story about an exclusive school with a dark secret. I expected more of a suspenseful thriller. Unfortunately, I didn’t find it suspenseful and just an ok book. It also read much like a YA novel.

I love novels about enclosed environments, so I was extremely excited for Elisabeth Thomas's debut when I read it was inspired by stylings of Sarah Waters and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Though I can see those influences at work here, the novel more strongly resembles the work of Daphne du Maurier and, perhaps most strongly for me, Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA. Catherine House is a prestigious, out-of-the-way school where its students must forego parental or any outside contact for the duration of their attendance. (And there are no holidays or breaks.) Creepy, Scientology-esque experimentation involving "pinning" electrodes to their bodies and indoctrination through group chant brainwashing is also openly practiced. Meanwhile, something even more sinister is simultaneously occurring that includes extreme isolation for students noncompliant with the run-of-the-mill programming. Most of the students are damaged in some way, trying to avoid painful pasts, and the school represents salvation, a safe haven, which means they have little recourse to fight back—and little incentive to choose to see what's actually happening to them, right in front of their eyes.

A+ to this book for mood and setting and intrigue. I was definitely invested to read to the end to find out what was going on. I also enjoyed a heroine who isn't the typical passive "recorder" for the novel's plot, but is messy and human in her own way, who sleeps with whomever she chooses and makes mistakes and isn't the perfect, idealized student.

My thanks to HarperCollins for an early copy of this book for review.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

I’m a total sucker for a creepy, private school novel and Catherine House did not disappoint. With gothic elements and a touch of sci fi, this one really sucked me in.

Catherine is an extremely elite and mysterious school for kids to attend after high school. The school is free and provides all room and board, but the students are locked within its gates with no outside contact for three years. The studies are immensely challenging and some fields are even groundbreaking. As rigorous as Catherine House is with education and workloads, it’s equally intense with its opportunities for partying, alcohol abuse, and sexual promiscuity.

Ines is running. From her life, from her monsters and from the law. Unexpectedly, she’s admitted to the Catherine School and escaping her life and reality for three years is her perfect solution. But Ines can’t run from her inner demons and quickly falls behind at Catherine.

“‘You must choose Catherine,’ he said. ‘Not just once, but every day. Choose to be here. Choose to study. To make friends. To succeed. To wake up every day and be alive, and go to work. It’s not an easy thing to do. It can be very hard. But you can do it. I know you can.’ He leaned forward, eyes unblinking. ‘The question is, do you want to? Or do you want to spend the next three years stupid and drunk?’”

Deciding to “drink the Kool-Aid,” Ines immerses herself in Catherine House, it’s history, and its secrets and takes the reader on a dark and twisty journey in the process.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely love the cover of Catherine House. One topic I love to read about is a creepy boarding house. However, this book just didn't pull me in. I wanted to love it, but in the end I just felt "meh." I am giving it 3 stars because I think there will be many people who enjoy it much more than I did.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and Elisbeth Thomas in exchange for my honest review.

Catherine House is a mysterious, elite school tucked away in the woods of rural Pennsylvania. Students live and study at the school for three years and must leave all of their possessions, photos, and clothing behind when they entire its gates. They won’t be able to watch TV or listen to music. They have to wear school-issued clothes. They can’t talk to or see their loved ones while they’re at the school; they can’t even leave its grounds. For three years, they must give themselves over to the secrecy of Catherine House entirely. But if they do, they are promised success and an unrivaled education. (Catherine House graduates include famous artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents, and more!)
We meet our main character, Ines, when she is starting her first year at the school. Like many first-year students, Ines is struggling to adjust to life after high school. But in addition to a rigorous schedule and new friends, at Catherine House, Ines also has to learn to deal with the rigid environment, strange happenings, and oh so many secrets.
This is one of those books that is tough to talk about without giving anything away, but lets just say, I loved it! It was impossible to put down—especially after you got about halfway through—and combines so many of my favorite literary things: secret societies, campus hijinks, suspense, thrills, and maybe even a little sci-fi. It’s a great read, and I really hope it becomes a movie. It would make such an incredible film!

I was drawn to this book by its cover and description. It was creepy and while I finished the book several days ago I still have questions floating in my mind regarding the characters and the plot of the book.

This book started off as my dream read! Shady private school, mysterious back stories, bratty teenagers and strange things happening all around. I was so intrigued by the Catherine House and it's back story and what was happening in secret behind it's closed doors.

So the premise hooked me. I devoured the first half. By 3/4 in I was starting to get really restless and confused. It just didn't feel like it was going anywhere... or maybe just not in the direction I had hoped.

By the end - I felt like I had wasted my time. I was so disappointed in where the story went when it had such a strong start! There was a big element of the school that I was so fascinated and curious about... without giving away spoilers - I'll just say that no questions were answered and the main character even admits she doesn't understand it either!

There was zero to none as far as character development or where anyone came from (or went!) so it was hard to connect to anyone or anything. I was hoping for so much more!

Great start - promising direction. No follow through. Bummed. I had really high hopes.

I was very intrigued by the description of this book. It had me wanting to read Catherine House. But I struggled through the entire book. I am not sure if it was the subject manner, the current COVID 19 situation, or what. I struggled to finish this book.
Catherine House is an elite school that only accepts certain students into its 3 year program. For some,this is the only way to get an education-its all paid for. The book itself it divided up by the years and then a few others. The First Year chapter, I liked and was enjoying learning about the way of the school and kids. But after that, it sucked the life out of me. To be honest, I didn't connect with any of the characters at all.
I usually finish a book in a few days, this book took me 2.5 weeks to finish. I wanted to put it down so many times. Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
#CatherineHouse #NetGalley

I rarely do not finish a book, but this one I just barely got through. I think it had potential, but just too many boring details. I think I had one gasp kind of surprise in the whole book. I wanted to like it but I didn't.

This book was intriguing in its premise of a mysterious school in which everyone who graduates is successful. The main character is not very likable. It is hard to connect with someone who is so disconnected. The story was interesting enough that I read the entire book, but feel unsatisfied. As a character says near the end, “It was all for nothing?”