My letter “N” pick for the A to Z Book Challenge was NINTH HOUSE by Leigh Bardugo. Let me start by saying that I’ve read every book Bardugo has written and loved the hell out of them all – until now.

NINTH House follows Miss Alex Stern, a young woman with a troubled past who is recruited into a secret supernatural society housed on the campus of Yale University. All the most renowned houses on campus are fronts for their supernatural specialties like spellwork, shape-shifting and divination, among others.Alex gets their attention (and a free ride to at Yale) due to her unique ability to see and physically interact with the dead (something that has caused her great harm in the past).

Along with her mentor, a charismatic young man named Darlington, Alex begins the journey of not only honing her own powers, but learning all there is to know about the supernatural houses that her particular house, Lethe, is charged to oversee.

Things go very wrong when Darlington goes missing, spirits begin to target Alex, and more nefarious things are afoot within the houses.

This book is rich with world-building and plot twists, and Alex and Darlington are strong and compelling characters, but the story shifts back and forth between present and past at whiplash levels, making it hard to keep up with and frustrating to have to flip back occasionally to various sections and refresh your memory when the past echoes into the present.

This book is also 75% info dump about the societies, their individual histories, players, and current activities to the point that it sometimes felt more like a slog than a read due to the slow pace. I realize this is poised to be the start of a series (two books projected for now but Bardugo has said she plans to follow Alex through several more) but I struggled with finishing this rather than feeling like I couldn’t put it down (like Bardugo’s other books). Four stars for a brilliant premise but too much information clogs up the gears.

Trigger warning: this book explicitly describes rape, drug use, physical abuse, and death.