Rating (1-5) 📘📘📘📘
Genre -Suspense, Fiction, Gothic Fiction, Thriller
Format - Paperback
Length - 448Pages
*Amazon Blurb*
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.
*My Review*
What does the future mean to you? What could you give up to be successful? What about 3 years of your life? Sounds easy, but what if those 3 years meant you had to give up any contact with the world outside of the school walls. No TV, no cell phone, no personal picture....nothing.
For the kids in this book, it's worth it. But are they only giving up 3 years of their life or more? Catherine House is like no other college you will ever find. The rules are strict and the classes are intense. At least there's a never ending supply of wine...what? Yes, you read that correct.
It doesn't take long for Ines (the main character) to start to question what is really going on at the school. Is it all too good to be true, is this school that dedicated to the future of young adults or is there something behind it all? Ines works on gathering what little clues there are and what she finds out will shock you.
