What it comes down to is that I found this book extremely unpleasant. And also dull. And reading it made me feel like I would rather be banging my head against something very solid. This was made even more frustrating by glimmers of stuff I probably would have found very intriguing in another author’s hands, or in another type of story altogether.
The Cloisters is about a woman whose name I have long forgotten who is heading to her first post-graduate job, supposedly at the Met in NYC but when she gets there, they inform her there are no spots. By COINCIDENCE a man named Patrick (that one stuck I guess?) who works in the Cloisters (an actual offshoot of the Met) and offers her a job there instead. At the Cloisters, she gets caught up in a toxic mean girl relationship with her beautiful and charming coworker, a coworker who is sleeping with the boss and the gardener, who the MC also starts sleeping with. Then Patrick ends up dead. Also, there are some weird tarot card readings in here that barely signify anything, but apparently were enough to get the publishers to market this as fantasy???
Anyway, it’s just about toxic, boring people who do terrible things, my least favorite genre of story. I don’t really recommend this one, but I guess if you like toxic people doing terrible (and boring) things you might enjoy it!