There are very few books that I reread and The Cloisters managed to make it onto that very short list.

Hays creates a world within a world juxtaposition with the dark, mysterious, beautiful halls of The Cloisters immediately surrounded by the bustling, loud, skyscraping environment that is New York City in summer.

The reader follows along as Ann meets new friends you can't wait to dive deeper into who they are and what they want.

A gorgeous, Dark Academia story at its best, you'll want to read this one and see for yourself what the cards have in store.

Katy Hays debut novel is a haunting and atmospheric story perfect for the Fall season.

Recent graduate Ann Stilwell cannot wait to escape her hometown of Walla Walla for New York City. After unsuccessful graduate school applications, Ann’s future is floundering and she’s hopeful this summer experience will launch her career. When the internship as an assistant curator at the Met abruptly falls through, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden known for its medieval art collection. Since Ann is desperate to escape her depressing past, she quickly embraces the divination research and her coworkers fascination with tarot cards.

The cutthroat academic setting, art history facts, dark atmosphere and sinister characters create an engrossing story. This debut combines mystery, coming of age and the occult. The author captures the steamy New York City summer setting with rich details. A unique and suspenseful read that will quickly pull you into the menacing world at The Cloisters.This debut has me looking forward to reading more from the author.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to review the title before its release.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not the biggest fan of Gothic reads. Gothic books, tend to lean more heavily on a strong atmospheric vibe and less on the actual plot. As a huge plot based reader, this makes most Gothic reads a miss for me. But a couple blurbs about The Cloisters said it would be great for fans of Ninth House, so I decided to take a chance on it.

Recent graduate, Ann Stillwell has just arrived in Walla Walla for a summer internship at The Met. But when her initial position falls through, a surprise offer to join the team at The Cloisters for the summer leads Ann on a journey that will change her life. As she immerses herself in not just The Cloisters, but also into Patrick and Rachel’s lives she finds herself drawn deeper into the world of tarot and pondering the question of fate. Can we really predict our fates? And once predicted can they be changed?

The Cloisters checks all the boxes for a dark academia, gothic read. I did think that the writing was beautiful, lyrical, and completely encapsulates the reader within the story. If you love atmospheric reads, and need a good fall vibes story, then this will be perfect for you.

For me the slow burn was a little tooo slow, and I needed more action. I loved the tarot aspect, but I kept getting distracted by trying to learn more about Tarot itself rather than being invested in Ann’s story, which honestly, I could care less about Ann. Her weird co-dependent relationship with Rachel is intriguing at first but once again felt drawn out and unsatisfying. Ann’s final twist also seemed almost unnecessary for me. It does a good job of bringing the story back full circle but felt like an afterthought.

I felt this had all the makings of being amazing, but it lacked ‘Magic’ for me. I would compare this to Ninth House only in terms of atmosphere as both have stellar vivid imagery. This is more a coming-of-age story and didn’t dive into either fantasy or magical realism enough for what I was expecting. For a debut, the writing was good, but the storyline could have been stronger.



The Cloisters comes out November 1, 2022! Huge thank you to Atria Books for my advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion. If you liked this review, please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my instagram @speakingof.books.

Wooooow what a wild ride! I absolutely loved this. This story really snuck up on me - starting as something fresh & unique and quickly turned into something much more sinister. I have never ready anything quite like it. I loved the dark academia / museum / nyc setting. High recommend, especially for an engrossing story to binge on a chilly fall day!

Ann leaves Walla Walla, and her past, far behind her when she heads to New York for an internship at the Met. However, when she arrives, she is thrown to discover there is no more internship for her. Instead, by a stroke of luck, she is assigned to the cloisters where she spends her days immersed in medieval art and the occult. When a deck of tarot cards is discovered, Ann and the researchers become obsessed with learning more and proving their theories to the world. But this obsession turns deadly and Ann must figure out who is friend and who is foe.

An incredible debut novel - I could not put it down. It combined intrigue, the occult, art history, a whopping mystery and some intense relationships. I highly recommend this!

The Cloisters is one of my favorite places in NYC, and has a special place in my heart as one of the first places I went for school as an undergrad new to the city, so I was thrilled to see a book set there, exploring how unique and odd it is. Coupled with some dark academia and an unexpected focus on the occult, I was psyched to read this as fall began (despite this book taking place in the sweltering summer). I loved seeing an academic story focus on art history and museums rather than classics or literature for a change of pace, and the occult and specifically tarot offered an interesting twist. I’d love to see more works about art from Hays as her writing about art, museums, and the claustrophobic, complicated, obsessive worlds around them was some of the best of the book.

From the blurb, I hadn’t been sure if there would be a fantastical element in the book, so I was perhaps a little let down that there wasn’t. The mystery and tension aren’t as tight and ratcheted up as they could be, but I felt interested throughout. I wanted to see more of Patrick and Rachel’s characters, especially Rachel’s as the ultimately key one the story revolves around. However, I enjoyed the slow burn of the book and that it wasn’t overly dramatic; it was still rooted in our everyday.

Disclaimer: I received a free advanced reader’s copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

So, who else can’t get enough of dark academia lately? This debut novel by Katy Hayes falls well into that category. A lot of books are compared to The Secret History, but this one started by hitting some similar notes for me.

Walla Walla native Ann Stilwell reports to her internship (with meager stipend) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC only to find that her placement isn’t available anymore. But she’s desperate to stay gone from her small town and the tragedy that happened there all too recently.

Luckily, the curator of another New York museum needs someone with her very specific speciality. And so she is assigned to work at The Cloisters, a gothic collection of buildings and courtyards that seems a place out of time. The staff at The Cloisters are preparing for an exhibit on the historical significance of divination, with a special focus on tarot. This is perfectly aligned with Ann’s own scholarship. Meanwhile the curator, Patrick and his beautiful protege, Rachel, seem interested in more than just the work. Ann starts to wonder if they are more interested in each other or testing divination out for themselves? Meanwhile there is an alluring gardener named Levi to distract Ann.

That’s all I’ll say about the plot without giving things away. There is a central mystery that happens within this setting, but with so few fleshed out characters (just one or two more than those I mentioned already), it seemed to me more of a why-done-it than a who-done-it. Still, there are a few other surprise twists along the way.

My favorite portion of this book, nerd that I am, was learning about the role of divination in the 15th Century, specifically in Italy. There was more of that in the first half. But I still found the second half enjoyable enough. Ann in the first half of the novel was as blank as her name, more of an observer of events, but I enjoyed getting to see her true personality come out by the end.

Not quite The Secret History, but a page-turner set in academia with some historical background thrown in for good measure. 4/5 stars. Recommended, especially for nerds like me!

Ann Stilwell wanted nothing more than to leave Walla Walla. After the death of her father and the cloud of grief that surrounds her and the town, she accepts a summer position at The Met in New York. However, on her first day, she’s told her position is no longer available and she will need to leave. Until Patrick, the curator at The Cloisters, comes to her rescue.

There’s a certain type of girl/woman in New York museum/literary circles that seems to always exist. They always seem to have the spotlight on them, everyone knows them, they know all of the key people. They dress in linen and supple leather flat shoes. They always have an air of arrogance and yet, once you are inside their circle, you realize they are lonely people.

That person is Rachel. Rachel quickly takes our girl, our lead, Ann, under her wing and draws her into The Cloisters almost instantly. She takes over Ann’s life. Giving her clothes, taking over any spare time, showing Ann a different sort of life than she ever imagined.

While this book could have just been a fantastic art history mystery, it turns into something darker, something more sinister. Ambition and greed are the true centerpiece of this book. While the tarot cards are the focus of the young women’s paper and research, the truth of everything lies in what they find.

Katy Hays has written a fantastic book, it’s academic, it’s haunting. There are moments of toxic female friendship and moments of true academic and art history. I love every single page. It also probably helped that The Cloisters is my favorite museum in New York.

This is a book written for so many types of people, but I think most especially for fans of The Secret History. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I was so excited to dive into the fascinating premise this book promised. But at 35% I am going to have to DNF. We experience the story through just the main character’s perspective, and a third of the way through, she hasn’t been brought into the inner circle, so she mainly just observes people disappearing to go do much more interesting things. She’s aloof and I found her perspective pretty boring and dry. The other characters are mysterious, but not very interesting; I’m not clamoring to find out what’s going on, despite the magical implications of the summary.

I was drawn to this book based on the cover and the synopsis mentioning the history of a tarot card deck. I thought the New York setting was enjoyable. I've been to several places mentioned so it was easy to picture. I feel like this book is a love letter to the museums of NYC. I've never been to The Cloisters though so that was interesting to discover. I really enjoyed the history of tarot and the plant aspects and their uses I was expecting this to dive more into the paranormal with the occult. I knew there was a death of some kind from the synopsis so I went in expecting it to be linked to tarot more mystically and it wasn't. When I wasn't reading abiut the historical or botanical elements of the story I was really bored. I didn't connect to any of the characters so I didn't care about their lives at all. The drama didn't pull me and I found it annoying. I'm not a fan of murder mysteries either so when that's what the story became, my interest tanked. I wish this had been more to my liking but it just didn't go where I wanted it to.

THE CLOISTERS is a dark academia lover’s dream. 📖

Desperate to escape her grief-stricken mother and dull hometown, Ann accepts an incredible position researching the history of divination at the Cloisters in NYC along a tight-knit, esteemed crew. She quickly becomes friends with a fellow researcher and the gardener while their mysterious boss keeps his distance. As the days wane on, secrets begin to echo through the halls and Ann discovers a hidden deck of 15th-century tarot cards that might be capable of predicting the future. This discovery leads everyone down a dark and dangerous path, threatening to upend everything they’ve worked so hard for.

The most compelling element of this novel and what immediately drew me in was the rich and intense atmosphere Hays has created. Since the characters spend so much time at the Cloisters, I was transported to the medieval gardens, marvelous galleries and tranquil library. The characters are so incredibly well-written and insanely complex that you almost feel bad for the rotten ones. Ann shows tremendous growth throughout the story and I loved her thoughts on fate vs. personal choice and how accepting gifts, no matter how small, can give others power over us. This is a delightfully mysterious story rich with history, art, the occult, romance and tragedy. I highly recommend!

The story starts off with an academic premise: the search for the first tarot pack. As part of the search for a historical artifact, we are brought into a tight and bizarre community of archivists and academics. When the story takes a twist into a murder mystery, the novel takes off. Just a brilliant book.

I absolutely loved this book.

This is one of the rare cases where a comparison (y title meets z title in this bla bla bla) is actually true. This was sold as The Secret History meets Ninth House, and boy did it deliver.

We meet Ann a recent college graduate inbound for a summer internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but as fate would have it, she end up at The Cloisters, gothic museum and garden where researchers are studying divination, tarot and history of art.

This book shows a different side of academia, one that hasn't been explored as much in other novels of the genre, which is the research. The novel doesn't take place in a learning institution, such as a university or boarding school, like so many other dark academia do. Instead, it invites us into the reality of the academic research, of hours of labor, student-teacher relationships, being obsessed with your field of study, the competition amongst peers and the desire to succeed and be the best, it's all here at The Cloisters.

And of course, death.

This book was very finely written, it reminded me a little bit of the way The Secret History is written, the first person point of view that can feel a bit claustrophobic even to be at someone else's mind for so long and confined into their thoughts. It was also extremely readable, I didn't want to put it down! It felt so good to feel this immersed inside a story after some reads that just weren't as incredible.

So many books these days are being sold as dark academia without being it, and it honestly feels so good to come across a book that has the potential to be great, and that it is truly great once you finish it. This was the perfect blend of the portrayal of academia, of obsession, toxic friendships, eerie settings and interactions, the outcast MC desperate to belong somewhere, I could talk about this book for hours and hours on end. Definitely a favorite and one of the best the genre has to offer. I'm still going to talk more about this book on my other platforms, but if you like dark academia in the slightest then you have to pick this one up when it comes out November 1st!!

This book also features some incredible quotes that just really have my heart, I'm going to leave some of them in this review, quotes taken from advance review copy and subject to change.

"So many of us here just wanted to spend our lives studying something. To be on libraries and classrooms, to be in archives and museums, to feel history through the things it left behind. But to do that is not to be with the living. You must remember that. And some of us survive all this death better than others."

"I thought little about his obsessions because we were all too preoccupied with our own. That was, after all, what being an academic was all about."

"That, for once, the thing that academic researchers had stripped of its magic was about to have its magic restored. Wasn't that, after all, why we had become academics and researchers in the first place? To discover art as a practice, not just as an artifact?"

"I should have seen it coming. The way the body would be laid out on the library floor, the way the gardens would be torn apart by the search. The way our jealousy, greed, and ambition were waiting to devour us all, like a snake eating its own tail. The ouroboros. And even though I know the dark truths we hid from one another that summer, some part of me still longs for The Cloisters, for the person I was before."

Clear your calendars on November 1st because The Cloisters is the perfect fall read! Atmospheric, gothic, academic literature at its best! I was immediately pulled into the tale of Ann moving from Walla Walla, Washington, to New York City to begin a post-college internship at the Met. Things don't go as Ann thought, and she finds herself working at The Cloisters researching tarot cards. From the first page to the last, I loved this story that explores how much of life is fate and how much is choice. If you enjoy The Measure, The Secret History, and People of the Book, you will love The Cloisters.

I felt uneasy within the first pages of The Cloisters, by Katy Hays. That feeling never went away. Something was very wrong at the Cloisters, a real museum in New York that’s on my bucket list, and with Ann Stilwell, our protagonist. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I got to the dramatic revelations at the end of the book. The tension I felt propelled me through academic rivalry, possibly supernatural discoveries, betrayal, and scheming. This book definitely scratched my dark academia itch.

Protagonist Ann is determined to join the precarious world of academia from a young age. At her father’s knee, Ann learned Latin, French, Italian, and obscure dialects of early Italian like Ferrarese. She specializes in the early Renaissance, a period that’s not as flashy as the high Renaissance or as sprawling as the medieval era. Although her language skills are valuable, Ann struggles to get a job at any museum that will take her away from Walla Walla and the recent death of her father. Ann somehow manages to wrangle a summer position at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art—but that job evaporates when her supervisor jets off for Europe and leaves her hanging. It’s pure luck that she manages to meet the curator of the Cloisters at the same time that she gets the news that there is no job for her at MoMA.

Or is it luck? From the moment that Ann joins the hothouse atmosphere of the Cloisters, working alongside Rachel and Patrick (the curator), my sense of unease grew. Ann, who never had the money for an elegant wardrobe or the inclination to really care about her appearance, accepts gifts of clothing from Rachel. Rachel, who is everything Ann wants to be—cool, rich, respected, desired—quickly becomes Ann’s model for her New York transformation. Then there’s Patrick, a volatile man desperately seeking proof that one can really tell the future with the right deck of Tarot cards. Out in the gardens of the Cloisters, Ann also finds the sexy and probably-a-criminal Leo, who encourages Ann to start breaking rules.

Ann bounces between all three of these characters (although she gravitates strongly towards Rachel). Should she follow her heart with the irreverent Leo? Should she keep to herself and follow the dictates of her boss, Patrick? Or should she continue to reshape herself to follow Rachel’s seemingly effortless trajectory in the rarified world of fine art and academia? I’ll admit that I worried about Ann. I worried that she wouldn’t have the personal strength to make her own way in the world as herself, instead of feeling like she needed to sublimate her personality and turn herself into someone else.

That said, there’s something wrong with Ann, too. She never does what one would expect and her ability to attach herself to others got my hackles up. If you’d like to know what really happens under all the scheming and betrayals and murder in The Cloisters, you’ll have to pick up a copy and read it for yourself. I’m not going to give away Ann’s secrets.

I couldn’t get into this book. I didn’t really like the characters and it just dragged so much that I never wanted to pick it up.

4.5 stars. This is the perfect fall dark academia read! It’s a book about escaping the past and how far you would go to get ahead in life, set in a gothic New York City museum full of medieval art, poisonous gardens, and suspicious characters. The characters are not exactly likable, but they’re interesting and complex - Rachel was the most intriguing and I could picture Anya Taylor-Joy playing her perfectly. There’s also a mystery surrounding a murder and a 15th century deck of tarot cards which may or may not decide your fate. I loved all of the twists and reveals and there were actually a lot of moments that left me surprised. This book definitely gets more exciting as it goes on and I was completely hooked by the end, highly recommend!

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Ann Stilwell is desperate to leave her life behind in Walla Walla, Washington. She doesn’t want any bad memories, especially her father’s death, following her during her summer internship at the Met in NYC. The only problem is, they try to lay her off the second she steps foot in the Met. Good fortune intervenes, and suddenly she is working for curator Patrick at the gothic museum, The Cloisters. Her job is to help Patrick, and his assistant, Rachel, find proof of tarot cards existence and use during the 15th century. Ann finds herself embroiled in a dark and dangerous mystery as the summer wears on. Her loyalties will be tested and ultimately she will have to face the things that drove her to NY in the first place. !
🌟🤓My review: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fate or free will? Ann finds herself wrestling with which is ruling her life during an unexpected summer working at the Met Cloisters. Although I’m a thriller/mystery buff, I did not see some of the twists coming in this story! A basic understanding of medieval/Renaissance history and how history museums function will be helpful as you read. The table explaining tarot cards in the back of the book was a cool addition! This is a slow build kind of story!

The Cloisters takes place in (you guessed it) the Cloisters museum in NYC and follows Ann Stilwell as she attempts to make something of herself through a summer apprenticeship’ish job. After being told that her spot at The Met had to be cancelled on her first day, she meets Patrick, the Cloister’s curator, and Rachel Monday, his assistant who whisk her up and give her a spot at the gothic museum.

Trying to leave behind her father’s death, her grief and all of the grad school rejections back home in Walla Walla, Washington, Ann enters a world where secrets run rampant, magic is believed in and where your future and fate may have already been picked out for you.

The majority of this book takes place around my neighborhood so of course I was intrigued. I will say the author did her research which was good to see. But (not a spoiler), she mentions that the 34th police precinct actually does it’s job and THAT my friends is pure fiction 🤣. This book was an entertaining read but I did find that it was slow getting to the action and I thought mysticism/magic was going to be more intertwined with the plot/have a bigger presence. The cover though is beautiful 😍.

I would recommend this to readers who like dark academia, the renaissance time period, magic and mysteries.

After her father's death, Ann Stillwell leaves the small town of Walla Wall, Washington for a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. But upon arriving, she is told that there isn't a spot for her there. Instead, she is offered a position at the Cloisters, medieval museum. She works for Patrick, the museum's curator, and with Rachel who becomes a very close friend. She also meets the gardener, Leo, to whom she becomes attracted.

During after hours at the museum, Ann leans that Rachel and Patrick read tarot cards. Patrick seeks the last card of a rare tarot deck to complete the set. He hopes to obtain this from an antique dealer. Ann comes upon the card accidentally and confides in Rachel that she's found it. The two plan to capitalize on the find but wait for the right time to do so.
As Ann and Rachel grow closer because of their shared secret, Ann and Leo drift apart. Ann meets up with an old friend from her hometown who tells her some disturbing things about Rachel. While Ann doesn't believe them, she is still concerned that she may not know her friend as well as she thinks.

One night, Ann joins Patrick, Rachel, and Leo in reading the tarot cards. This time, they ingest a mixture prepared by Leo that contains a small amount of a Belladonna plant that is poisonous in a higher concentration. They seek to achieve a state of enlightenment to help them receive the messages of the cards. The next day, Patrick is found dead,

Without giving away the rest of the book and the twists that follow, I would recommend this novel to those interested in divination arts, medieval history, and mysteries. I found the pace of the chapters leading up to the murder somewhat slow. After that point, the story really picked up.