I am a total sucker for this kind of book having grown up with The Secret History. It doesn’t quite live up to those auspicious highs but it is gripping nevertheless. A fantastic yarn.

Have been having a hard time with my reading choices lately and have wondered if I am losing my touch. Along came The Cloisters and I have realised what a breath of fresh air can do for one's equanimity - a big thank you to Katy Hays for "restoring me".

The book is a delight, the prose flows and I cannot fault it. The locations are lovely, the people are live and the whole story just hangs together so well.

Have had a smile on my face for most of the time, it is just such a well constructed tale. If you too would like a smile and something enjoyable to read, treat yourself to a copy of The Cloisters.

Delving into this book was like opening a rabbit hole of intrigue, mystery, mystical mysticism. I found myself catapulted into a world of dark acadamia, with gothic arches, gardens and a relentless New York Summer how I imagine it to be. I found Ann an intriguing character who was seduced by a world that she had longed to be part of while escaping one she wanted so desperately to leave. Leo, Rachel and Patrick were all secondary characters which rounded this novel to closing ranks of friendship, toxic love and a desperate need of acceptance. I found myself not wanting to leave the book, it pulled me in the way Rachel pulled Ann in and I devoured it with my whole heart. This book was absolutely magnificent.

*The Cloisters* by Katy Hays had a great premise and such potential. I really enjoyed it, though there were some things standing in the way of it being genuinely great. Hays’ writing style flows and successfully builds suspense in this dark academia-adjacent unsettling mystery. I will be reading more of Katy Hays’ work in the future.

Ann, the main character, unexpectedly gets a summer research placement at The Cloisters museum in New York City, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and finds herself surrounded by a small but intense cohort of researchers. She becomes friends with Rachel, a beautiful and wealthy young woman who seemingly has everything. While researching the history of divination with Rachel, Ann discovers a near-ancient tarot deck which catapults her into a dangerous mystery where the stakes are deadly.

I really wanted to love this book, but something was missing. I thought the tarot deck would be more instrumental and unsettling in itself than it was – or at least than I thought it was. I was expecting it to be pivotal like the deck in *All Our Hidden Gifts*, but instead, it occasionally offered extra depth or foreshadowing. I usually am enthralled by complicated and slightly vicious friendships, but this one was not as compelling as some I have read (e.g. *In My Dreams I Hold a Knife* and *These Violent Delights* by Micah Nemerever). Overall, it is still a decent book, but I wish I had gelled better with it.

The Cloisters checks all the boxes for a dark academia, gothic read. I did think that the writing was beautiful, smooth, and captures the reader. However, the slow burn was a little to slow and I needed more action, my interest fizzled out the more I read on.

When I saw that this book was compared to The secret history one of my all time favourites I had to try it, I was not disappointed.
The cloisters in NY, I could have visited it, but had a busy schedule so missed it, how I regret that decision.
The book is gripping from the start with Ann 's desperate need to leave Walla Walla and make something of her life. An unconfident person she applied to the Cloisters and is taken on seemingly by chance to help with research by Patrick, she fits in well and is befriended by the beautiful, mysterious and rich Rachel. Ann struggles with money and tried to make savings in her miserable apartment. Rachel invites Ann to move in with her ending her money worries.
Ann is included in tarot readings with rare cards and has a gift for reading them.
Leo is a gardener at the Cloisters and Ann has a relationship with him, he is a strange secretive character with a dark side.
All of this happens within an academic slightly haunting setting. A visit to Rachel's holiday home uncovers more secrets and alerts Ann to danger.
A death or is it a murder? Poses questions about theft, truth and deceit.
An insight into a rare world of research and secrecy.
Thank you NetGalley and katy.

Ann comes to New York for a placement but finds herself in a different one than she expected but she soon finds herself drawn into it. Tarot cards, her father's work and then the death of Patrick makes her wonder what is really going on.

This was an interesting premise and the location draws you in but the story fell a little flat. It was a very slow build and it was obvious early on who killed Patrick. I did like the twist of Ann's reasons for coming to the cloisters. The ending was well done though I had guessed about what might have happened to Rachel. A gothic read.

I really struggled with this book and at times found it boring.

The book centres around Ann, who leaves her home to escape the grief of her father's death, to move to New York and work at the Cloisters Museum.

Ann works on discovering a rare pack of tarot cards with her friend Rachel, and uses the cards to guide her in life but is Rachel the friend she believes she is.

The Cloisters was a cross between an historical fiction vs a murder mystery. It took a while for the story to really kick in and just didn't have the pace or mystery I was looking for

I loved The Cloisters from the first chapter. The relationships between the characters, dark academia elements and the mystery involving tarot cards? This is my kind of book. I've pre-ordered this book as soon as I finished reading and even if I don't plan yet to give it a re-read, I am so happy to look at it at my bookshelf. I also absolutely loved the guide to the tarot at the end - as someone who tried to learn it once but gave up, it was a nice addition and made guiding around the novel a bit easier.

Ann Stilwell is an outsider. Educated at a small liberal arts college in East Washington, she has not been able to secure a doctoral place in her chosen subject of medieval art. However she has managed to get a summer placement in New York. Sent to 'The Cloisters', Ann is put to work on a project around the use of tarot cards in medieval Italy, a project that brings her into the orbit of the sexually alluring Leo and the rich heiress Rachel.
For a relatively short novel, there is a lot here. As a great fan of the medieval and having visited the Cloisters several times I was hooked from the start. The book has been described as a modern version of 'The Secret History' and I can seen that as an influence. At its best the writing is mesmeric. My only quibble is that there is a lot shoehorned in here and the twisty nature of the final section is sometimes a little lost.

I love books about academia and obsessions, and this one was a very clever and engrossing combination of mystery, compelling characters and tarot. Eager to leave her life behind her, Ann Stillwell is spending summer working in a prestigious gothic museum and garden called The Cloisters, renowned for its medieval and Renaissance collections. Her co-workers, curator Patrick and a fellow researcher Rachel are charismatic, but seem to be fixated on finding a link between tarot and Italian Renaissance. This is a book full of secrets and tragedies, with the heady summer weather creating an atmosphere of tension and obsession. I loved the setting of the book in a beautiful museum, the art references, and especially the fact that the author wrote about tarot – it was a perfect blend of fascinating history and secrets. I loved the characters too, and Rachel was a particularly engrossing character, but the story did not go the way I expected. It was darker and more sinister in places than I imagined, a gripping and delightfully evocative read.

I wanted this to give me The Secret History vibes but I struggled to get fully immersed in the story. It was a good read and I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite meet my expectations.

I was disappointed with this book. The tagline had me hooked, thinking this would be filled with death and mystery, however, I found it long and boring. It only got interesting 200 pages in with the first murder. The ending was great, but really, all the preamble to get there was a bit of a drudge to get through.

A gorgeous book for dark academia fans who love The Secret History and Ninth House. Had me gripped the whole way through and loved how it ended!

I was so disappointed in this

This book was in my top 5 anticipated reads and 14% of the way in I’m bored, nothing is happening, I feel like the author writes like we should already have this connection and background knowledge of the characters and it’s just a bunch of random information and thoughts thrown at the reader

For such a fabulous premise it has poor execution

I was drawn to this book because it was billed as a new Secret History - I should have known better. Donna Tartt's The Secret History was a tour de force, one of a kind. The Cloisters would very much like to be one too, but it falls woefully short.

The setting, the Cloisters of the title, is a museum in New York dealing with medieval and Renaissance art and artefacts. Ann Stillwell is a gauche young post-doc from a small Washington town, freshly arrived in New York for a summer residency at the Met. When this falls through, she is snapped up, apparently serendipitously, by the Cloisters' curator Patrick Roland. Patrick and his perfectly poised, universally popular assistant Rachel are researching the history of tarot cards, convinced that their use as a means of telling the future goes back much further than documented history allows.

What follows is a would-be gothic tale aiming to make us question the idea of predestination - is our future really all laid out, for those who know how to read the cards? Are all our decisions just playing into the hand of Fate? Unfortunately, for me it all just fell flat. Maybe because I just find this central question so preposterous, but a more skilled author should have been able to make me suspend my disbelief. Maybe because I didn't find any of the characters either compelling or convincingly drawn. Maybe because I saw the twist in the tale coming from a mile off, and I'm generally absolutely hopeless at spotting twists in a mystery. Maybe because the writing style is plodding, too much telling and not enough showing. I just found this a boring slog, and I will not be recommending it to anyone.

Beautifully written and so well-paced, The Cloisters is perfect for fans of dark academia and complex friendships. The characters are really well developed and I found myself completely drawn into the story. Katy Hays' writing is visceral and immediate, with a physicality to it that contrasts beautifully with the subject matter.

4.5*

The Cloisters is a dark, atmospheric and mysterious book which I think has potential to be one of the next great dark academia titles.

We follow Ann during her summer internship at The Cloisters, an exclusive and close-knit museum in New York, the complicated tangle of relationships she develops with her colleagues Rachel and Leo and her mentor Patrick, and the mystery of fate and morality as the summer slips away.

I really loved the setting of this, and was pleasantly surprised to realise The Cloisters are a real museum! They're absolutely stunning and make the perfect backdrop for this book. I also appreciated that this really digs into the "academia" part of dark academia, detailing research and papers and a lot of things other DA books tend to skim over, which is a shame since I find it so interesting! A lot of the research in this book hinges on the mystery of tarot decks and fortune reading, and the historian in me loved learning!

While the pacing of the book was not as well refined as it could have been, I didn't find it to be too much of a problem as I enjoyed the plot, especially the way several threads come together at the end, I found it ultimately really satisfying.

Ultimately though, I think the contentious point in this book will be the characters. None of them are particularly likeable, and all are complex with their own senses of morality and their own goals. I found them all so compelling, in particular the ever enigmatic Rachel, who remained a wonderfully written and complicated character the whole way through. Her and Ann's friendship was very believable, especially Ann's feelings as she slowly comes to realise it's a manipulation - but one she needed.

I loved the history in this. It put the academia in dark academia. It just created the perfect blend of dark twisted happenings and the study of tarot. I don't know how much of the tarot history was legit, but it sounded good and was really interesting to read about.

I wasn't quickly endeared to the character, but I wanted her to succeed, especially because her descriptions of Rachel were really gay for a book with a hetero sexual relationship. I was interested in their relationship as well as the relationship with Leo. There's something about toxic friendships that really pulls you in a gets you reading.

All in all, it was the atmosphere that really sold this for me. I could really feel how it would be to work at the cloisters and the energy of the tarot.

to start, thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an eARC for review<3

much like the way the tarot cards unexpectedly and inescapably drew Ann in, this book captured me in a way that I honestly didn’t expect. going into it, I knew it was something I’d enjoy, but it exceeded my expectations.

the writing was exciting and beautifully done, and I felt that the twists and turns were placed so perfectly and kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. at a glance, the ‘side’ characters (patrick, rachel, leo) can appear to be two dimensional, but for me, it only added to the mystery of it all and whilst I read, I couldn’t stop theorising about the true nature of this quaint group of people and how they became so intertwined.

I absolutely love reading up about tarot and anything witchy, so I was instantly captivated, and continued to be as the plot developed and countless secrets began to unravel. I kind of wish that we had some more insight into the characters a little earlier on or a bit more clarity, but I suppose in the end it just added to the magical mystery of the book!

this is definitely something I’d recommend for lovers of gothic, dark academia who also enjoy a little bit of a thriller/crime aspect mixed in!