Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

genre: fiction

Catherine house is an exclusive place. Ines knows that, based on her past, admission to any college is a miracle but the reality of Catherine is even better than she could have imagined. Soon after arriving, however, Ines notices that what she has been told about Catherine and what Catherine actually is may be two different things. In the crumbling halls, there are both secrets and a cunning strangeness that make this college experience hard to quite understand let alone articulate.

I sorta liked this, and it was also slow for me. Sometimes it felt like I was swimming through a lot of words to try and understand what was happening. Often the language is beautiful and other times it felt so ambiguous I was a little frustrated. There are some really interesting ideas here and there and parts of it did surprise me. The trope of secretive and eclectic colleges was played out really well but the randomly casual sex that didn't really add to anything and at least one glaring anachronism made me feel out of touch with the story. Maybe I just never fully connected with Ines, I don’t know what it is that I was missing.