Skulls, Spells & Secret Societies: Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House Is the Ivy League Nightmare You’ll Love

We’re back to our regularly scheduled deep-dives—and this week’s book kicks off with dead bodies, dark magic, and enough secret society drama to make Gossip Girl sit up straight.

Today’s spotlight: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, the first book in her adult fantasy series set at a version of Yale University where the real curriculum involves necromancy, soul-splitting, and occult surveillance.

Our protagonist, Galaxy “Alex” Stern, is a high school dropout with a haunted past who wakes up in a hospital and gets recruited to Yale on a full-ride scholarship… with one small catch: she has to monitor the university’s eight underground magical societies.

Think: The Secret History meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, sprinkled with prestige-campus privilege and murder-y ghosts.

Bardugo’s foray into adult fiction is twisted, witty, and emotionally layered—a departure from her YA Grishaverse, but every bit as addictive.

📚 Ninth House debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list and kicked off Bardugo’s Alex Stern series, with Hell Bent released in 2023 and a third book on the way.

🎬 A TV adaptation is in the works at Amazon Studios, with Bardugo executive producing and fans eagerly casting their dream Alex (Zendaya? Florence Pugh? The people have opinions.)

🎓 Real-world interest in dark academia surged during the pandemic—and Bardugo’s fictional Yale remains the blueprint for spooky campus escapism.

📈 Ninth House has become a BookTok staple, especially for readers into “mystery with a side of monsters.”

In today's WHTTR episode, we break it all down:

• 🏛️ Secret Societies IRL: The real magic and myth behind Yale’s actual “Ancient Eight” and why Bardugo’s take is chef’s kiss.

• 👻 Trauma & Ghosts: Why Alex’s ability to see the dead is as much metaphor as magical device.

• 📖 Bardugo’s Evolution: From Shadow and Bone to something bone-deep serious—how she leveled up in tone and stakes.

• 🗡️ Hell-bent Heroines: Why we love our girls morally gray, magically powerful, and emotionally complicated.

This one’s for fans of true crime, haunted dorms, and morally murky main characters with knives and trust issues.

Leigh Bardugo is a bestselling fantasy author best known for the Grishaverse (Netflix’s Shadow and Bone anyone?), but Ninth House marked her leap into adult fiction—and she didn’t hold back. A Yale alum herself, Bardugo turned the ivy-covered walls into a gothic playground of power and peril.

✨ Fun Fact ✨

Bardugo once said in an interview that she wasn’t allowed into any of Yale’s real secret societies… so she invented her own. That’s the energy we’re looking for.

🎙️Listen to whttr on

📚 Purchase Ninth House on Amazon

🎧 Listen to the audiobook on Audible

If you’ve ever been haunted by student debt, you’re halfway to understanding this plot.

_{Stay Connected}

We’re back in full swing with our usual literary bangers, deep-dive episodes, and enough ghost-adjacent academia to keep your book club chaotic.

📅 New episodes every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
📲 Follow us @whttr_podcast for fan theories, quotes, and witchy reels.
💌 Forward this to that one friend who still wears a dark turtleneck like it's a personality trait.

Because some books aren’t just stories—they’re spells.

We’ll see you Thursday for another plot twist, another power trip, and possibly another haunted library.

Until then:

📖 Who has time to read? We do—and we’ll take our magic with a side of mayhem.

The WHTTR Team

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