The Cloisters
Ratings56
Average rating3.1
15
Ratings56
Average rating3.1
Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, hoping to spend her summer working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she is assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art. There she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, each with their own secrets and desires, including the museum's curator, Patrick Roland, who is convinced that the history of Tarot holds the key to unlocking contemporary fortune telling. Relieved to have left her troubled past behind and eager for the approval of her new colleagues, Ann is only too happy to indulge some of Patrick's more outlandish theories. But when Ann discovers a mysterious, once-thought lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards she suddenly finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition. And as the game being played within the Cloisters spirals out of control, Ann must decide whether she is truly able to defy the cards and shape her own future . . . Bringing together the modern and the arcane, The Cloisters is a rich, thrillingly told tale of obsession and the ruthless pursuit of power.
Reviews with the most likes.
Langzaam, maar meeslepend.
“Choice is the one thing we all share. It's the ultimate level playing field.”
Voor een groot deel van het boek gebeurt niet zo bijster veel en moet je het als lezer vooral hebben van de atmosfeer, die perfect wordt opgebouwd en je als lezer steeds verder lokt, sust en bedwelmd. De plot is mysterieus en blijft vaak op de achtergrond, terwijl eerder focus wordt gegeven aan de charismatische personages en hun invloed op ons hoofdpersonage. De onthullingen en wendingen waren interessant en het einde was bevredigend.
It's time to graduate from Dark Academia University. Congratulations on not getting murdered! Sadly, your humanities degree is useless in the real world - time to enter the equally murderous world of Dark Post-graduate Internships!
The Cloisters is set in a small New York University where a charismatic researcher and his beautiful interns are researching the artistic history of tarot cards. Murder, intrigue, and betrayal ensues.
I really loved this book. I think the characters were really compelling and interesting to read, the occult elements were given just enough ambiguity to make the book feel slightly eerie without tipping into any magical realism territory and there was the odd twist that really took me by surprise.
The one thing that somewhat lets it down, for me, is actually the setting. I kept thinking that the author really wants reviewers to bring out the old ‘the setting was really another character in the book' cliche, but she never really earns it. Every so often we are told how much the Cloisters are impacting the characters' psychologically, but I couldn't see any evidence of it. This element felt like a total miss, which is a great shame given that it's a brilliant idea - a medieval cloister turned into a museum: claustrophobic, haunting, and mysterious - it could have been so great.
But this is a small gripe. Overall I really loved it and would put it up there with books like The Secret History as top reads in the Dark Academia genre. I hope Katy Hayes writes more books, I will definitely read them!
DNF at 25%.
I got so bored. There was very little happening and I didn't really find the characters engaging.
