The Cloisters is the first book by Katy Hays. It’s also a “Read With Jenna” book (as in, Jenna Bush Hager from TODAY show).
It’s June in New York City. Ann Stilwell, a recent college graduate, has arrived in The Big Apple to spend her summer working as an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Except when Ann gets there, she’s told her position is no longer available and she needs to head back home to Washington.
At the very moment she’s being dismissed, Ann meets Patrick Roland, the curator of The Cloisters—another museum and branch of The Met located in Fort Tryon Park in Northern Manhattan. The Cloisters is home to an impressive collection of European medieval art and three beautiful gardens, so of course Ann is over the moon when she’s offered a job there.
Patrick hires Ann to work as an assistant on his team, which basically consists of only one other person—the beautiful, mysterious, and elusive Rachel Mondray.
After Ann spends some time in The Cloisters working with Patrick and Rachel and getting to know them better, she gets pulled into their dark, strange obsession with reading ancient tarot cards. When someone at The Cloisters dies unexpectedly, Ann finds herself at a crossroads—is it time to call it quits with the tarot stuff, or should she stick it out to make a name for herself and secure her future?
The Cloisters is super over-hyped. I should know better when it comes to these celebrity book club picks.
First, it breaks the “show, don’t tell” rule of writing. The entire novel is narrated in first person by Ann. She tells us everything that goes on—how much she enjoys working at The Cloisters, and how it makes her feel. But we’re not really “shown” any of these things. It makes for a boring, detached experience.
Ann is written as one of those characters who’s initially “on the outside looking in” before she finally gets in—just like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, or more recently, Sophie O’Neill in The Hunting Wives. It’s a tired concept, and no longer original or titillating.
In nearly every chapter, there’s at least one mention about how Ann thinks Rachel is so smart, beautiful, classy, cold, admirable, etc. It’s a bit strange how she obsesses about Rachel constantly, even though she’s supposed to be into Leo, the gardener. It’s unclear exactly why she’s attracted to Leo—there’s no buildup there.
There are also some last-minute “twists” at the end that are poorly executed, and that fall flat as a result. When all is said and done, there’s nothing memorable about The Cloisters, and nothing about it that sets it apart from other thrillers or literary suspense books. It’s not pieced together very well—no shocks, no surprises—just all predictable.
Lastly, this novel did NOT inspire me to learn more about the real-life Cloisters, or to plan a vacation to visit it. Ann tells us The Cloisters are enchanting and magical, but I can’t feel any of it through the writing.
Everyone pokes fun at Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, saying it’s cheesy, lame, and commercialized. But you know what—it made for an incredibly fun and immersive reading experience. It made me excited about history—I spent extra time looking up photos of the places mentioned, and added all those international museums and attractions to my bucket list. I did none of that while reading The Cloisters. I just didn’t care.
Final words: you’re better off skipping this one. If you’re still on the fence about it, read reviews about it on Goodreads, where it has 3+ stars. This is definitely the last time I’m ever “reading with Jenna.”
Katy Hays has also written:
- Saltwater (2025)
- The Vipers (2025)
What did you think about The Cloisters, did you like it? I’m interesting in hearing what anyone has to say about it.
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