Title: Catherine House

Author: Elisabeth Thomas

Publisher: Custom House 2020

Genre: Horror?

Pages: 311

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.

Among this year’s incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine. For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. But the House’s strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.

Right away, I’m going to say that this book is not for everyone. But it was definitely for me! I love a super atmospheric gothic style mystery novel. We spend hundreds of pages immersed in the world of Catherine House where we sink deeper and deeper into this very strange world. Nothing much really happens, but I completely fell into this novel. Ines was the perfect slightly unreliable narrator to lead us through the labyrinth. Once we really start to wonder what is happening in the new materials lab, I was so deep that I couldn’t find a way out. It was a beautiful journey through the weird and depressing.

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