Welcome back to another Monday Match-Up, where we pair two books that may look different on the surface but share a delicious, twisted thread binding them together. Today, we’re stepping into the hallowed halls of academia—where power, privilege, and secrets seep into every shadow.
🖤 Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Dark magic hums under Yale’s ivy-covered walls. Alex Stern, a girl with a past as messy as her gift for seeing ghosts, gets pulled into the orbit of Yale’s secret societies. What unfolds is part campus novel, part occult thriller, stitched together with Bardugo’s razor-sharp prose.
⚪ The Secret History by Donna Tartt
No ghosts here—just the kind conjured by obsession and guilt. A group of elite classics students at a small Vermont college chase beauty, intellect, and transcendence until their world unravels under the weight of their choices. It’s haunting, cerebral, and devastating.
Why they’re a perfect pairing:
Both novels strip away the pristine facade of academia to reveal something much darker. In Bardugo’s world, power comes from literal rituals; in Tartt’s, it’s borne of arrogance and elitism. Each features a cast of characters you’ll love and loathe in equal measure, and both linger in your mind long after the final page.
If you’ve devoured Ninth House and want something equally atmospheric but rooted in realism, The Secret History will sink its claws into you. And if you were captivated by Tartt’s psychological unraveling but want to see it twisted with supernatural teeth, Ninth House is your next obsession.
📚 Have you read both? Which secret society would tempt you most—the arcane or the intellectual? Drop your thoughts below and let’s see where your allegiance lies.
literary gluttony 
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