Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Length: 320 pages
Audiobook Length: 10 hours and 16 minutes
First Published: 2022
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Rachael’s Review
When Ann Stillwell gets a summer job working for The Cloisters, a gothic museum studying divination, she finds she enjoys researching the history of fortune-telling and tarot cards. As Ann gets caught up in the drama of The Cloisters, she finds a 15th-century deck of tarot cards that may actually tell the future. Desperate to make an academic breakthrough, Ann must decide who she can trust and how far she is willing to go to make her name in the world.
I’ve been seeing Read with Jenna’s book club praise this book up and down social media, and I just don’t get the hype. Admittedly, Hays does a great job painting the perfect dark academia setting. However, the story itself was glacially slow, full of unlikeable characters whose motives didn’t really make sense. Unless you are obsessed with academia, I’d skip this overrated bestseller.
Publisher’s Description
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.
Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a gripping debut that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
About Katy Hays
Katy Hays is an adjunct art history professor and the author of The Cloisters. Hays currently lives in Olympic Valley, California. Visit the author’s website →
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