Catherine House
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3.2 • 29 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
“Elisabeth Thomas had me mesmerized from the first page. Dreamy and brimming with dread, Catherine House will swallow you whole."" — Rory Power, New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls
Trust us, you belong here.
A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.
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.
Combining the haunting sophistication and dusky, atmospheric style of Sarah Waters with the unsettling isolation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a devious, deliciously steamy, and suspenseful page-turner with shocking twists and sharp edges that is sure to leave readers breathless.
Customer Reviews
Nothing happens
There are beautiful parts of this book where you really glimpse great potential but the whole plot with the “new materials” concentration seems like something that I wrote in my high school fan fictions... I can get on board with a plot where you can’t leave the school to build suspense but the way it’s written is not believable or more interesting than if they had just regular semesters. The moments when the author emphasizes the feelings of loneliness and not belonging are when I was the most interested. Even her little romances with random people were more interesting than the strange sci-fi kind of plot with the new materials. It just wasn’t interesting at all. I didn’t care about the concentration.
I do have a feeling that I would have enjoyed this book a lot more had the voice narrator of the audiobook been even slightly better. The voices she did for the Latino characters were exaggerated and, I thought, insulting. The voice changes she did for any of the characters were all terrible though. Her narration made me queasy and it was difficult to get through listening to even five minutes. My advice would be to have literally anyone else voice it. And I feel bad saying that but it was a horrific listening experience and made me hate certain characters just based on the annoying tone she took or the way she exaggerates their voices. It was like listening to a parrot mimic a human voice. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. Anyway, I’ll read something else from this author and give her another chance but I did not like this. There was potential but that’s about it. Too bad it was so hyped up.
Now I understand the polarizing reviews…
First off… technical editing error…The titles of the sections did not match the chapters in the audiobook and the sections are way too long.
As for content, there is just too much. A lot of repetitive descriptions of tea, food, old wallpaper, vomiting, unshaven legs, and weather patterns. There were unnecessary gratuitous sex scenes that added no value to the story. One or two would have served to shape the main character.
There was so much repetition that, when I would take a break, I would have to listen to the same chapters over and over again just to figure out where I was in the story. So much of the story just sounded the same.
And after much dredging, we get to the climax of the story… what is going on in the underbelly at Catherine House. In contradiction to the rest of the novel, it is described so vaguely that even after thee times rereading, I had to google what the author was implying. The author spent so much time describing everything else but when it came to the pivotal point in the novel, it felt glazed over and rushed.
Many reviews raved about the diversity of the characters, but I did not get that at all from my read. I felt all of the characters lacked depth and were forgettable aside from Baby, the rabbit, and the protagonist.
I disagreed with many others in their review that the main character was unlikeable. I actually found this to be one of the redeeming qualities of the book. I thought she was relatable as we all have an apathetic dark side and she gave a way to feel what it would be like to act out on those feelings.
Many people disliked the ending, but I happened to enjoy its ambiguous nature. This book is not a thriller at all as it was advertised. It is relatively plotless and most definitely not a page-turner. It is more a romance and an exploration of human nature with a little weird sci-fi haphazardly thrown in.
2 stars for me.