The Cloisters is one of those books that I found captivating while reading it and then noticed all of its flaws as soon as I'd had some time away from it to reflect on the reading experience. It's an atmospheric literary fiction read with some dark academia influences.

I loved seeing the Met Cloisters get the acclaim it deserves. It's one of my all-time favorite places in NYC that was the perfect setting for this story. I do wish there had been a map in the book as a lot of gallery and cloisters names within the museum were just used with no details about where these spaces were or what they really looked like beyond a few minor details. Even as someone who's been to the Cloisters, I found this disorienting, so I imagine it would be even more confusing for readers who haven't visited the museum.

The other main issue I had with The Cloisters was the flimsy character development. Many of the main characters, particularly our narrator Ann, felt more like personas than people. Rachel was the stereotypical "not like other girls" character in dark academia who was defined seemingly solely by her money and poise. We saw so much of her on the page that I kept hoping for a sense of who she was as a person but we never really got it. Some of this I'll attribute to dark academia as a subgenre, which loves to focus on people as ideals, but there was still room for a bit more character development to help this book stand out from the many other dark academia books I've read.