Another month, another book club book! It’s no secret that I’m often quite skeptical of the books chosen for my book club, but I had higher hopes than usual for The Cloisters by Katy Hays, as a friend of mine with good taste had read and enjoyed it. Also, it was genre fiction and I’m a bit burnt out on literary fiction, as a lot of it is quite depressing—or, at least, the literary fiction I’ve read for this book club has been—and I’m not really into that right now. I know the world is a disaster, thanks very much. Reading is my fun time.
What’s it about?
Following the tragic hit-and-run death of her father, Ann wants nothing more than to leave her hometown. She is a talented linguist with a speciality in medieval art, and hopes to spend the summer before an uncertain future curating at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; unfortunately, her position falls through and she is left floundering… until she meets Patrick, who recruits her to work at The Cloisters. There Ann, Patrick, and Rachel—a girl Ann’s age but with considerably more figured out—study the history of fortune telling, an area of study that Ann finds lightly ridiculous until they find a historically old deck of tarot cards that forces her to reconsider everything she knows about fate and destiny.
What’d I think?
I’m still new to dark academia as a genre, but for the most part I like it. I’m far from an academic—I went to college and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English literature, so I’ve been around academia, but I never actually liked school; it’s better than working because you get weekends off and periodic vacations, but that’s about all I can say for it—but I can appreciate the way that the genre makes it seem so exciting. In my real life, I can’t imagine caring about the precise year of a deck of cards or when exactly they started being used for such-and-such purpose. The Cloisters describes Ann’s work as keeping old things alive, things that would be dead without her focus and passion, and that’s a really interesting take because it is probably true. If it weren’t for the niche historians, would anyone actually care precisely when tarot was first used for portent reading? Personally, I was more surprised to learn that there was a time when tarot wasn’t used for that. Hays does an excellent job making the stakes feel high even for something that, to me personally, feel very low. You wouldn’t think something centuries old could become motivation for a modern murder, but here we are. Hays’ characters care about these cards and, against all odds, she made me care too.
I liked the way I could never quite tell if the things that Ann was feeling—the pull of the cards, destiny’s hand—were real or not. It can be a lot of fun to be left off-balance like that. I read a lot of fantasy, and usually it is marked very obviously. Of course it’s fantasy; there’s a dragon. Don’t get me wrong: I love obvious fantasy, but there’s also something very compelling about this sort of fiction, the kind that straddles genre and keeps the reader wondering what, exactly, they’re reading. Books like The Cloisters can easily tip either direction. I’ve read books like this that lean hard into tarot and make the magic tangibly, obviously real. Other times, the story stays decidedly grounded in the real; people may believe in the tarot, as they do in the real world, but there is no concrete indication that it is supernaturally powerful. It is fun to be kept guessing, and Hays balances it well, with Ann’s initial skepticism transforming first into curiosity and later into belief as she gets more and more deeply immersed in the eerie world of the Cloisters.
The book kept me reading; there are enough twists and secrets and murders to make for a quality thriller. That being said, there are some issues with the book that probably come from its being a debut. The pacing is a little wonky, with the character development lurching a bit; Ann’s emotional growth is better in theory than in practice. I got what Hays was going for, but the journey is far from seamless. While it’s admittedly a very difficult task to dramatize reading and categorizing old documents, Hays skips over a lot of the time, and has to cue the reader in by informing us of developments like the breakthroughs in their research and the increasing closeness between Ann and Rachel. It’s hard to know how this could have been done better; research is not narratively exciting, but since it is the bulk of the plot of The Cloisters, Hays did commit to the challenge. Vibes can only get you so far. The vibes are done very well, but the actual meat of the novel doesn’t always match them, and even as I was blowing through The Cloisters there were a few moments when admittedly it felt like I was reading a very detailed outline. To be fair, the copy I had was an ARC. It’s possible that Hays fleshed some things out before the final novel was released, but based on the size of the final book I’d guess that no significant material was added.
The book hits its stride in the last third. It’s when everything starts going down. It gets more dramatic, more pacey, more punchy. Once everything starts to come together, it’s hard to put the book down and the momentum carried me quickly to the end. While I was in it, I had no complaints. Once I’d closed the book and was no longer being swept away, though, I had some hesitations. There was at least one jaw-dropping surprise that was exactly the sort of thrill I was looking for, but the resolutions to the main story were a bit messy. I’m going to spoil them in the next paragraph, so skip to the verdict if you want to stay spoiler-free.
Spoilers! It’s a good thing that The Cloisters isn’t marketed as a murder mystery, because there is only ever one viable viable candidate for the murderer. The book briefly wants us to suspect Leo, Ann’s gardener boyfriend, but there’s never any real drama between Leo and Patrick; that makes Leo a weak candidate, and indeed it would have felt massively anticlimactic if he’d indeed done it. Rachel is far too obviously the murderer; she’s too suspiciously perfect, her relationship with Ann obviously moves too fast, and since the narrative focus is all on the tarot research, that’s the only possible motivation. The fact that literally everyone Ann talks to about Rachel is suspicious of her and warns Ann away from her is also telling. Anytime a character leaves a trail of “tragic” dead bodies behind them, it’s either a red flag or a red herring, and in this case it was too obviously a red flag. Rachel’s terrifying steering destiny explanation almost makes it worth it, but when Ann follows in her murderous footsteps it becomes a bit too hard to swallow. You’re telling me that both of Ann’s cowriters die under mysterious circumstances in the same summer but no one raises an eyebrow when she submits that work solo? She winds up with a valuable piece of art history in her personal possession, a groundbreaking paper authored under her name alone, and not one but two dead colleagues and she just… goes on to be successful? I liked the way the end twists and turns, especially in regards to Ann’s father but also with her transformation into Rachel 2.0, but frankly that was just too much. Forget a grain of salt, you need a whole barrel. That being said, I was fascinated by Ann’s progression towards becoming Rachel: like Rachel, she first killed a parent, then her roommate…
What’s the verdict?
The Cloisters is far from perfect, but it is still a lot of fun to read. A few debut-novel pacing issues aside, there are some legitimate surprises and spooky vibes that make this a perfect choice for anyone into dark academia.
What’s next?
Want more tarot cards? Read The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater or All of Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’Donoghue.
Like dark academia? Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo is a great one. My Dearest Darkest by Kayla Cottingham is also a good choice.
By far the most similar book to The Cloisters that I’ve read is A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee, which has a similar is is magic or is it just spooky vibes? thing going on.
I’ve also heard great things about A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Like I said: I’m new to dark academia yet so I haven’t read even the most famous examples of the genre yet, but I’ve heard lots of rave reviews.
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