Wonderfully eerie and dripping with tension, Catherine House is perfect for fans of gothic boarding school tales and novels focused on experiences of privilege and class. A bit slow at time, though I think the big twist is well worth your patience.

I left this book with more questions than answers, but I kind of loved it? It was confusing and frustrating at times, but I found myself entranced by it and desperate to know what happened. The ending felt a little rushed, but the moments that led up to it were beautiful and raw.

Plasm. The question throughout the book as we move through 3 years at Catherines with the carefully selected students to the house. A bit Gothic horror, a bit science fiction, — it kept my interest and while overall moderately satisfying, I’m left with more questions and unresolved what? than I really like. BUT — it is a haunting read with just enough layering of the questions to keep me reading.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get into this book and I DNFed it after around 50 pages.
Just wasn't for me.

I’m unsure how I feel about this one... at times I wanted to fall asleep and felt almost as lulled and hypnotized as the characters the book described. Yet, there where moments where some of the thoughts and sentiments expressed were truly so real, relatable, and deep. This wasn’t what I’d think of as a #thriller but more of a #gothic abstract tinged with a bittersweet, existential dread throughout. It was haunting and creepy but not in a terrifying, horror genre type of way. It was more just dark and melancholic. That being said something about this is like looking at a piece of art - I can’t put my finger on what about it is so magnetic and moving, but there’s definitely something there.

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“You are in the house. The house is in you.” Catherine is an elite university experience, with only a select group of students being invited to learn and live within their hallowed halls. Part of the deal is that for the three years that you spend at the school you can have no outside contact, bring nothing from your life as you knew before it in, and escape is not an option.

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The story follows one rebellious young woman, in her three years at Catherine, as she experienced the brainwashing, ritualistic cult like traditions of the school, experiences love, lust, and loss in a near constant drunken and aimless stupor, and discovers the disturbing truth of the secret that lies at the heart of Catherine.

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Mad scientists and experiments gone wrong meets gothic haunted house vibes meets the bizarro Ivy League in this one.

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The reviews on this one are SO MIXED so don’t let me discourage you. There is something really extraordinary buried within this one, I promise.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The synopsis of this book sounded intriguing to me so I requested a copy to read.
Unfortunately, I have tried reading this book on 2 separate occasions and during that 2nd attempt, I have only managed to make it halfway through so I'd rather stop here and state that this book just wasn't for me.

I only finished this book because I cannot start a book and not get to the end. But it was a struggle to make a sense of what was I reading and understand the interaction of the characters.
The main character was not relatable. The plot was confusing.
There had to be people that like this book in sorry to say that I was not one of them.

Enjoyed the story but it was lacking in some areas. The plot moved forward slowly over the course of three years and could have benefited from a quicker pace. The “twists” towards the end were predictable and a little bland because the author never really got to the heart of the science happening. I loved the descriptions of the house and the cult vibes. I also loved the characters. Ending felt incredibly anticlimactic.

This book had soooo much potential! But I could not understand the main component of the plot, plasm! It was way too complicated a topic with hardly any background or explanation from the author. You could tell the author had created this fantastic world building in her head but just it didn’t translate on paper. I read this pretty fast due to the fact that it was really intriguing. But the suspense fell flat and I was left super confused by the main plot and climatic moments. I almost questioned a few times if I was reading a sequel to another book because I had no idea what plasm was.

What an engrossing, yet disturbing book. As a fan of academic fiction, I looked forward to Catherine House and was not disappointed. While the ending left me feeling uncomfortable and dissatisfied, this seemed only appropriate.

SPOILERS: At Catherine House, there’s a special major called “new materials,” and the book occasionally mentions a supposedly revolutionary material called plasma. We don’t learn much about it, though, and the whole arc of the book felt flat. So I thought maybe this was a plotless character study, a type of story that I definitely like, but the narrator was so detached that it was difficult to get a sense of her. I also had a hard time connecting with the other characters; for example, Baby’s death and resurrection (sort of) meant nothing to me. All throughout the book, I felt like a fly on the wall without any context. The gradual tone shift over the course of the book was interesting, and I enjoyed the little bit of horror toward the end when Ines finally understands Viktoria’s proposition, but I didn’t feel these things as strong as I would’ve liked to because I couldn’t really read or feel Ines.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the copy.

Catherine House is a unique and unsettling book. Ines, the main character, has come to Catherine House from bad circumstances. She doesn’t trust everything, but also wants to stay. She drifts from day to day observing everyone and everything around her. We see three years of school life through her eyes and get a glimpse of what may be behind Catherine House. This was very well written and the characters are fully fleshed out. There are a lot of layers to the book. I recommend it. I reviewed this on Goodreads and Amazon as well, but I can’t get the links copied onto this form.

From the description, I knew I would definitely buy this for my library. Catherine House is eerie, strange and suspenseful but not for every reader. People either loved it or thought it was too vague and confusing.

Thank you, Netgalley, for a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion!

Unfortunately, said opinion falls in line with the other reviewers' opinion. I was very excited when I received a copy of this book and had great expectations. The synopsis was what sounded intriguing to me. I'm sad to say that the synopsis is the only thing that was interesting about this book.

The characters were totally unlikeable. Ines was the worst of them all! The whole story dragged out and bored me to death. I was hoping for some kind of gothic mystery twist, but it never came. I even had to read the ending twice because I fell asleep the first time around. This book was an absolute letdown.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I really wish I had liked this more, but I just found it incredibly boring, and...that's really all I have to say about it.

This book is deliciously weird. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator does a fantastic job. It is definitely worth listening to, if you're able.

It's one of those books that's not really about anything, at least in my opinion. It is not plot driven, and I don't know that I would even say it is character driven. It is just a whole lot of weirdness smushed together. Now, that is probably going to be off-putting for a lot of people--it is not for everyone--but I seriously loved this one, and I want to immediately start reading it again. it is so atmospheric, and it put me in mind of The Yellow Wallpaper and We Have Always Lived in a Castle. They both had that weird feeling of not really knowing what's going on, like this one does.

Thanks to the publisher, the author, and NetGalley for a copy of the ARC.

Elisabeth Thomas is a magician of a writer who expertly blends a deeply atmospheric boarding-school story with a futuristic sci-fi mystery in CATHERINE HOUSE. A grown-up, sophisticated version of Lois Duncan’s Down a Dark Hall, this dazzling debut will have you turning the pages late into the night.

The promise of a Gothic novel set at an exclusive boarding school is what lured me to pick up Elizabeth Thomas' Catherine House. Unfortunately, it failed to deliver that promise and is yet another classic example in which a book's premise is actually a lot better than the book. To be honest, I am not completely sure what this book is about even after I finished it but I will do my best in trying to give you a synopsis. Students are accepted to the mysterious and prestigious Catherine House only if they agree to give up contact with the outside world for three years in exchange for unimaginable power and influence. Ines arrives at Catherine House because she has nowhere else to go. After months spent partying, she has barely graduated high school and is failing to deal with a traumatic memory that left one person dead. Ines sees Catherine House as her last chance, but she quickly realizes that she doesn't fit in at Catherine House either. She lacks the motivation that drives other Catherine students and she seems to be the only one leery of the cult-like mediation sessions and the possibility that students are being experimented on at the school.
Though I had a difficult time following the plot, I was intrigued enough to keep reading. Ines had the potential to be a fascinating character. I wanted to know more about her back story and learn the truth of the traumatic event. Ines is kept at a distance from the reader, which makes sense considering how hard she tries to bury down her trauma, but she does not make an interesting character to follow. She is constantly drunk (apparently alcohol flows like water at this school) and sleeping in some different stranger's bed constantly. After a while the plot felt repetitive and the mention of the "plasm" experiment was convoluted and confusing. I definitely think this book has a niche audience and I was definitely not a member of that club.

I did not finish this book. I read over half, it felt like it continued to build up to something, but nothing of substance ever seemed to happen. It seemed to have potential, but I didn’t care to continue it to find out.