The Cloisters by Katy Hays - Review

I bought this book earlier in the year I think, with a Waterstones voucher I had. It was on buy one get one half price and I liked the premise of it, so I picked it up. I really DID like the blurb, but I didn't really gel with the story and it took me ages to read. I think the execution just wasn't great. 

So, Ann Stilwell is from the Walla Walla in Washington state. She has been a student at Whitman university and is trying to get into grad school, but she has had a ton of rejections. Her dad was a professor at the college but was killed when Ann was still in high school. Through him through she learnt about translating and became interested in the early Renaissance, which is now her area of study. She is desperate to get out of Walla Walla even though her mother doesn't want her to go. She has a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so she rents a small studio flat and moves the entire way across the country to New York City.

However, when she arrives she is told that the man who was supposed to be her mentor has gone to Germany or something to study, so there is no job for her. But then she is saved by Patrick. He is the curator of a museum linked to the Met called The Cloisters. He is desperate for a helper and takes Ann with him. He introduces her to his underling, Rachel, who Ann sort of already knows. At the museum there is also Leo, who is a gardener. The whole place is very cloistered and very claustrophobic. Patrick brings Ann into his confidence eventually about his work. He thinks that tarot cards were used in Italy in the Renaissance which would prove that they were used earlier than has been previously thought. 

At the beginning of the book you get told there is a body, but it's not obvious who the body belongs to until the middle of the book. Ann and Rachel become close, but Rachel is really only into herself and what she wants. She's an ambitious young woman but she also has a lot of past history and Ann doesn't know whether to trust her or not. Ann discovers something that she and Rachel decide to keep from Patrick, thinking that he will steal their research and be known as the main author of anything they publish, just because he is a lot older, more established, and a man. I did agree with them on this, to be fair. 

I felt like there was just a lot of flim flam in the book. It needed cutting a lot I think. The setting is really creepy - the New York summer is incredibly hot and that claustrophobia really carries through the whole book. I liked Ann but thought she was naive. I was hoping that there would be some kind of twist at the end which made the run up to it worth it. There is a twist, but it didn't quite make it worth it for me. I'm giving this three out of five.