The Cloisters is the the sort of novel that keeps readers thinking long after turning the last page. There are so many twists and turns, and endings possible, and yet the ending, when it appears, seems inevitable. In The Cloisters, Katy Hays creates a novel that is a maze of contradictions, many of which will catch the reader by surprise.

There are four central characters in The Cloisters, none of whom are quite what they seem. It is the unfolding of their histories that helps to lay the trap for each of them. The reader must decide what is choice and what is destiny, and is it possible to manipulate both choice and destiny to fit an agenda. The focus on fate seems like a piece of a larger theme, and yet, it is anything but. As mysteries continue to develop, the tarot cards will take on a life of their own, one far in excess of their reality. Are tarot cards depicting fate or are they inspiring ideas that people confuse with fate? Hays lets the reader answer that question.

The role of academia, the artificiality of academic life as Hays describes it, and the use of graduate students in both sexual and research roles is very true to life. The plot of The Cloisters is multi-layered and complex, which is a significant part of why readers will either love it or despair that they are missing something important. And yet, the basic conflict between good and evil and whether we choose one of the other or they choose the characters is, in actuality, the central plot device in The Cloisters. Katy Hays is a first time novelist, but given the complexity of The Cloisters, she is destined for for a long career writing novels.

I thank the author and the publisher for providing this ARC for me to read and review. The above comments are my honest review of The Cloisters. Thank you also to NetGalley for suggesting this ARC for me to read.

The Cloisters is a moody, atmospheric novel rooted in the Met Cloisters - a gothic museum and garden housing medieval art and deadly plants. Ann Stilwell leaves her small Washington town eager to join the Met as a curatorial assistant but upon arrival finds that the professor she was supposed to be assisting is off on a summer sabbatical. Patrick, the curator at the Cloisters who happens to be in the room as she is getting the news, scoops her up and brings her over to the team. Their work and style is different than she expected - her other team members, Rachel and Leo, are as mysterious as they are welcoming. Ann starts to notice that certain things aren't adding up but embraces the oddities and leans in. What follows is truly surprising!

This was a super dark read and the twist felt like it slowly tiptoed in. I enjoyed it but wish it went even further - I felt like some of the pieces didn't fully connect for me and once the chaos was in full swing it felt too surprising. That being said, I guessed who was responsible for everything from the beginning but that did not impact my reading experience. Overall this was an incredibly enjoyable story with lush settings and characters. I haven't read many books like it!

The Cloisters is out now! Perfect for book clubs as I'm sure many will have different opinions + anyone who loves the dark academia vibe. Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the ARC - The Cloisters is out now!

Delighted to include this title in the November edition of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction, for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

I originally wanted to read The Cloisters because of my love of the actual Cloister Museum in New York City. As an off shoot of the larger Met Museum, the Cloisters Museum is normally less popular and not as frequented; however the gothic environment and displays of the museum are second to none. Katy Hays does a wonderful job of using descriptive language to illustrate the gothic architecture and overall mystery surrounding the Cloisters Museum. Described by many sites as "atmospheric", Hays deep dive into the history of tarot cards and divinity plays a major role in the book and taught me a lot while reading.

Then on publication day, Katy Hays novel was chosen as a "Read with Jenna" book club selection and the novel gained huge recognition and a larger audience base. With all that being said, I was less than impressed when I was finished with the last pages. I found the book to drag in the middle, with the plot being curious but not enough to keep me wanting to read more. I kept putting the book to the side, and starting other books to try and "clean my literary palate" so to speak. I feel like this novel has been boosted so much by social media and celeb influence that it falsely bloats the impact the novel has on its every day readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this novel.

There’s a reason why this debut novel has been chosen as a Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club pick and a November Book of the Month pick. Seeped in those perfect-for-fall dark academia vibes, “The Cloisters” is a slow-burning journey into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where a group of researchers comes across a 15th-century deck of tarot cards that are theorized to tell the future.

I really liked this debut. The first half was a slow burn but really set up the characters and their motivations well. I was enthralled and could not stop thinking of it when I wasn't reading. I loved all the discussion of tarot and of fate being written in the cards and unknown or what you make it. 3.75

So the actual Met Cloisters just made it to my bucket list. Katy Hays' book The Cloisters leaves a little to be desired. I was totally intrigued by the first sentence, "Death always visited me in August." and the allusion to a hunt for medieval tarot cards. But The Cloisters is more a girl drama/love quadrangle/murder "mystery" (mystery in quotes because it wasn't THAT much of a mystery) than about the history, so a little disappointing. I loved the ancient garden references. Three out of five stars.

I picked up this book because I love a book that takes place in a museum, and in this book The Cloisters is so well described it becomes a central character.

It's a book filled with twists and the thickest atmosphere I've ever read. Unlikable but complex characters abound and this is dark academia to a T.

I think this just wasn't the book for me. I don't know if my expectations were too high or I didn't read the blurb close enough, but this book just didn't deliver for me. My main complaint is this was pushed as a book with magic/mystical/fantasy elements and there really aren't. It is far more for people who are looking for literary fiction with a drop of other. It felt like a bait and switch.

So if you are looking for a dark academia literary fiction with museums, tarot, complex characters and slow burn plot this is for you.

Katy Hays' The Cloisters was a good read, but not a "new" read. It's a formula I like in novels, though it no longer grabs me the way it once did.

You know the tale.
• Small town girl and hopeful scholar moves to NYC, hoping an internship at the Met will help her get into a good Art History grad program and prevent the need to return to said small town.
• There's the worldly rich girl who becomes a friend—or does she?
• Small town girl tries out a romance that's a bit edgier than her usual and maybe is/isn't a good idea.
• She finds herself working at the Cloisters, where she encounters the kind of art history community she's always longed for.
• She also encounters poisonous plants and an early tarot deck that may allow one to truly foretell the future.
• There's also a murder.
• And some unresolved murders from the past.

These above are plot elements I enjoy. However, until near the novel's end there weren't plot elements that surprised. The Cloisters does deliver surprise at the end, but the surprise didn't cancel out my feeling of reading something a bit too familiar.

If you like the scholarly competition, rich/poor, murder, with possible otherworldly elements genre, you'll enjoy The Cloisters. If you haven't read a great many such books, but think these elements sound interesting, you'll probably love The Cloisters. The pleasure is inversely related to the familiarity of the tropes.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

A fun Dark Academia-inspired novel with excellent setting and pacing.

The Cloisters takes place at the titular museum in Manhattan, and I can’t believe this setting hasn’t been used more frequently. It’s absolutely perfect for this sort of book, and Hays takes full advantage of it and creates a terrific sense of place.

This book has a satisfying academic bent, though it’s definitely Academia-lite, which is fine but lands it closer to academic thrillers like The Ancient Nine than say, The Secret History in tone and language.

I loved the way the author used the tarot cards in the story. Tarot is something a lot of authors have toyed with in these sorts of books, but they pretty much never get it right. This is the first academic novel I’ve seen use tarot or tarot cards successfully.

I liked the characters as much as the setting, and felt they were well-drawn and well-suited to their roles. My only real gripe with this book was the side plot about Ann’s father and what happened between them. It felt unnecessarily nasty and out of step with the rest of the book, and there are a LOT of plot holes connected to it. This was especially frustrating because there are a number of very simple alternatives that still place Ann where she is feeling how she does (and even let dad meet his demise in pretty much the same situation) without all this nonsense that doesn’t add up in the end. It bugged me enough to knock a star off my rating, but not enough to keep me from enjoying the book or recommending it enthusiastically.

I love a good Gothic and this is one! The Cloisters had a little bit of everything.-atmosphere, academia, and history. I wasn't prepared for all those twist and turns, so that was a nice surprise. I think thriller readers would enjoy this one too.

This book sounded fantastic for me. I was really excited for it. However, It was such a slow read for me. The writing and story development just didn't catch my attention unfortunately. This one just wasn't for me, overall.

Dnf 40%. This had all the makings for a book I could fall in love with. Unfortunately, I found the main character to be quite a bore & rather teen angsty for a highly educated woman. Additionally, The other characters seemed to be pretty one dimensional. I do love a slow burn but this one did not capture that feeling at all for me. Overall, atmosphere was great & the prose was good-just didn’t hit the mark for me.

This was not the dark academia book I was expecting, but it fun.
The characters were relateable and it was a different kind of dark academia

Pros: I was so excited to read this book because it contains so many of my favorite things in books—a museum setting, an art historian, dark academia, murder, artifacts, comparisons to The Secret History, etc. I’m looking forward to listening to the Bad on Paper podcast episode on this book because I’m curious to hear what others thought of the book.

Cons: I went into this book with too high of expectations because the description sounded like the perfect book for me. I liked this book but didn’t love it like I was hoping to. I have yet to read a book that is described as like The Secret History actually living up to the craft of The Secret History.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
➡️Swipe for synopsis
📆PUB DATE: out now!
Read if you like:
📖Dark Academia Vibes
🔀Genre bending books
🪄Divination (tarot)

I really enjoyed reading this book. Although it is set in summer, the dark academia and fall vibes it gives are so perfect for this time of year! The explanations of occult and astrology and the history of divination were SO interesting. I can understand why some readers were bored because of this, but I was just as interested in the subject matter as I was in the plot. This book would be classified as a slow burn for sure, but the unfolding of the twists was executed so well and I was surprised by each one. I highly recommend you add this to your end of fall/winter TBR!

Thank you so much @atriabooks for the gifted arc in exchange for an honest review🥰

Link to my review on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckdanh_LzXl/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Ann Stillwell is delighted to leave Washington, leave behind her grieving mother and the memories of her father. When she gets to New York however, all of her dreams are dashed. The man she was supposed to work under has left the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the summer. Luckily, even as her heart is falling from the news she's just gotten from the Director of Human Resources, hope springs. Patrick Roland, the curator at The Cloisters, needs help and, well, Ann is available. While slightly disappointed that the job isn't going to be what she expected, at least she has a job.
It's this job that introduces her to not only Patrick but Rachel and Leo as well as a handful of other people but those are the two that are going to affect her the most deeply as she is dragged into theories of 15th-century fortune telling. Could a deck of cards really tell the future? Especially a particular set of cards? And what does it have to do with her father's work? And her mentor's?
When their work leads to someone dying, Ann suddenly has to decide what she believes in and how much fate really does play a hand in our lives.
I am not usually a reader of darker books like this but around the Halloween season, I often turn towards these and this was a perfect book for this time of year.

Four stars
This book comes out November 1, 2022
ARC kindly provided by Atria Books and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

While this story primarily takes place in a museum setting, it has a dark academia feel to it with the nature of the research project. Told in first person from the point of view of Ann, I found her to be very relatable. She was a daddy’s girl who grew up spending time with her father researching and learning multiple languages that has led her to take a summer internship after college with the Met. She has a more complicated relationship with her mother who seems to be afraid of everything.

Once ensconced into her internship program, which was shuffled around to the Cloisters under suspicious circumstances, Ann forms complex relationships with another researcher and the museum gardener. When a member of the team is murdered, Ann gets caught up in the possible motives of these new people in her life. The dark ambiance of their research into a historical deck of tarot cards is threaded with themes of fate versus free will. I found parts of the murder mystery to be a little predictable, but I enjoyed the journey too much to care. Recommended to fans of dark academia and the occult.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for a copy provided for an honest review.

This was scholarly, gothic, and FUN. This is the perfect fall book. I've seen comparisons to The Secret History, but I found this to be far more enjoyable a read than Secret History. I highly recommend, even if fantasy is not your thing, this is fantasy light

Thank you Atria Books and NetGalley for the advanced electronic review copy of this great book. I loved loved loved the cover — absolutely gorgeous! I really enjoyed the historical and academic (research) side of the story, the subject matter (tarot), & the explanation at the back of the book about the Major Arcana and the meaning of each card. Having the story take place home in NYC, at the Cloisters, was the icing on the cake. The murder mystery part of the story I didn’t enjoy as much despite figuring out who done it pretty much right away. Overall, a great read I would definitely recommend.