The Astrology House (spoilers) | Carinn Jade

This review contains spoilers for the ending of The Astrology House by Carinn Jade. If you are looking to keep spoiler-free, head back to my main review!

I’m going to try to keep my spoilers more succinct, because there is too much to do play-by-play here. Read on to find out how it ended and the ending explained!

What is The Astrology House about?

Rini inherits a beautiful Victorian house on the Long Island shore and has converted it to a quaint retreat where guests can come and go through Astrology readings and group sessions while enjoying the beautiful grounds and stunning mansion. When a group of Manhattanites arrives with a lot of drama, Rini is prepared to host them. But she may have an alternative motive for bringing this group together, and she’s planning to reveal it before the weekend it up.

The group has secrets of their own, though. Attorney Margot has been focused on becoming a partner at her law firm, but she’s been disappointed she hasn’t been able to get pregnant yet. Her brother Adam is the only family she has left–the two bonded after their parents died in a car crash when they were younger. Adam is a novelist who is secretly a famous romance writer, and he’s married to a popular social media influencer named Aimee. Her content focuses more on her kids than her marriage, though Adam doesn’t seem to mind. Aimee’s best friend Farah is a successful OBGYN. They actually met when Aimee was pregnant with her first child, and then reconnected when Farah had her child. Now, they can’t imagine life without one another. Farah is married to a politician named Joe, but secretly she’s had complicated feelings about Aimee. Meanwhile Margot’s husband Ted invited his friend and fellow investment banker Rick to join them for the weekend. Along with Rick is his wife Eden, who isn’t very connected to the group.

There is plenty to come with this group as they all settle in at the Astrology House. Rini has no plans to let them go until the shameful secret one of them harbors is brought to light. But that isn’t the only secret that will be revealed.

What were the big reveals?

Farah is harboring a crush on Aimee that confuses her. Aimee has no idea, she thinks her marriage to Adam is happy, even if she didn’t read his most recent manuscript. But Adam has secrets of his own–he has been having an affair with a “woman in red” who we later find out (and this was shocking) is Eden! Eden who is on the trip with them. It turns out Eden and Rick are in an open marriage, though the arrangement is fairly reluctant on the part of Eden. Adam wants Eden to leave Rick for him, but Eden has been resisting making a move towards that. Over this weekend, Eden has come around and the two sneak off to be intimate and discuss ending their marriages.

When Margot find out about the affair, she discusses if Adam should be frightened of Aimee finding out because of what happened “last time”. Early in Aimee and Adam’s marriage she discovered he was cheating on her with one of his students. A woman named Mira. Aimee followed them, becoming more upset the longer it went on. One day after Adam left Mira’s apartment, Aimee approached her and pretended to be another student whom Adam had an affair with. Aimee claimed he dumped her and left her broken hearted, which also happened to Mira. Then she convinced Mira she could help her win him back (I’ll be honest, this decision still confuses me, but it is the story we are told). As Aimee helps Mira, she tells her not to sleep with Adam yet. But when Mira sleeps with Adam anyway, Aimee loses it. She goes to the bar where Mira works and pours beer on her, telling her to stay away from her husband. Adam begged Aimee for forgiveness, and they moved on. Or so she thought…

Meanwhile at the retreat, Rini has them engage in a confession exercise. Rick admits that he slept with someone he met at a bar 10 years earlier. Afterwards, the woman’s sister sent him messages saying that her sister was passed out and didn’t consent. Rick felt defensive at first but also guilt and shame, mixed with confusion over what really happened that night since he was very drunk as well. Joe shares that he was with someone else when he met Farah and even though their relationship had run its course, he still feels guilty for it. In the present, Joe’s former aide goes to the press with allegations that he touched her inappropriately, putting his political campaign at risk.

Margot finds out about her brother’s affair and tries to get him to confess to Aimee. At another game at the retreat, Aimee explodes, thinking that it meant Adam was having an affair with Rini. Finally, Rini reveals her connection to them. She isn’t having an affair with Adam and she never did. The student Adam had an affair with ten years ago was her sister, Andi. Mira was Miranda who is also Andi.

How does it end?

Andi reveals she has been hidden away in the house the whole time. After what happened in college, Andi has never been the same and Rini has found a way to protect her, allowing her to hide from the world. It seems that Rini’s revenge plan is targeting Adam, but it isn’t. She’s targeting Ted.

Ted was with Adam the night his affair with Andi was revealed. While Adam followed Aimee home, begging for forgiveness, Ted approached Andi. Ted was nice to her, and Andi initiated romance between them. After confirming he wasn’t in a relationship (like Adam was), Andi slept with him. It resulted in a pregnancy. She planned to keep the baby regardless, and told Ted he could be involved or he would need to never ask about the baby again. Ted is happy about the news and the two go away together to celebrate. Andi gets incredibly sick and eventually goes to the hospital thinking she is having a miscarriage. That’s when she discovered she’s actually having an abortion. Ted gave her the pills without her knowing and caused her pregnancy to terminate. Margot realizes that this all happened after she and Ted were engaged.

Rini and Ted fight and fall into the water. Adam, Aimee, and Farah rescue them but both are unconscious. Farah could begin to save Ted, but she stands back to wait for Rini and saves her first. Ted dies and Rini is resuscitated. It turns out the prediction that Rini would die on that date was true, but she was brought back to life as well.

Three months later, Farah and Joe are getting divorced after he tried to use their son’s neurodivergence to save his political campaign from the sex scandal. Margot is living with Aimee and Adam has moved out for the time being. Margot finds out she finally got pregnant. Aimee has started posting more “honest” content about her life and the troubles in her marriage, and her followers are responding positively to it. When Rini gets out of the hospital, she and Andi reopen Stars Harbor for new groups to come to the retreats.

What did I think?

This was surprisingly juicy! I expected a more somber novel given the title and cover. Instead, The Astrology House is a soapy portrayal of a group of friends who are harboring a lot of secrets. And isn’t a retreat where they are all isolated from the outside world in close quarters the perfect place for their secrets to come bursting out? I certainly think so!

This book is dramatic! It starts with the usual affairs, secret crushes on friends, and fighting between couples. But eventually it turns out the affair is with another friend and we learn about all of the secrets from the past that have come back to haunt them. Eden is a truly awful character, and it was strange the way the author resolved her and Adam’s affair. They both said they loved each other and then realized they both wanted to stay in their current relationships. It’s a bit convenient, right? I wanted fireworks! Adam got off too easy if you ask me, and Eden did as well. Let’s not forget those rude comments she made to Margot about her infertility, for starters. Adam’s affair with Andi/Mira was gross enough to begin with, and then he has another affair. But perhaps the most telling things about Adam come from Margot, who finally has the veil of adoration for her brother lifted and sees him for who he truly is–a man who never takes accountability for anything and lets others deal with his messes. Margot remembers something her mother once told her as a child in regards to Adam:

“If you clean up their messes, they start to think you’re the one who made them.”

That one hits. We could all learn from this lesson. I love how it cuts straight to the core and shows who Adam really is. Margot will always love her brother, but she finally sees his selfishness. That makes it particularly confusing that Adam isn’t necessarily out of the picture at the end. Aimee asked for a separation, but it doesn’t seem that she plans to divorce him from what we are told. Don’t forgive him, Aimee! This man is not capable of real love.

The biggest reveal comes when we learned that Andi is the same person as Mira (who Adam had an affair with), but that is not who Rini is targeting for revenge. The story about Ted is sickening. Jade does a good job explaining non-graphically how it all went down. While we hear the story from Andi’s perspective, some of the worst aspects to it are told in Farah’s thoughts as she makes the conscious decision to not save Ted–or at least to not save him right away. I loved this entire sequence where Farah talks about her training as a doctor to go clinical and be able to make the decisions that others can’t. Including the decision to let Ted die. In a bizarrre twist, Margot pursues murder charges to avenge Ted’s death, but doesn’t succeed. I’m not sure what to make of this after everything Margot learned and what she witnessed in terms of the fight in the water. I didn’t think we got enough closure that Margot had taken in what a true dirtbag her husband was. Maybe he didn’t deserve to die, but a murder accusation seemed a bit harsh. Ted’s death was partly his own doing, and then accelerated by inaction on Farah’s part rather than action.

Unexpected and fun, though riddled with strange choices that soured it a little bit at the end. I was left puzzling over why the author chose to let Adam and Ted have any redemption whatsoever. Adam didn’t end his affair because he realized how wrong it was–he did it because Eden was no longer a chase after she reciprocated his feelings and they decided to leave their spouses. Suddenly Adam was out! I hope Aimee divorces him because he is simply too selfish to show any growth, at least in the first ten years of their marriage. Perhaps he can change? Farah was my favorite character but I also enjoyed Aimee and even Margot to a certain extent. Rini was harder to get a read on through the book, so while I appreciated her bold revenge plot, I can’t say I necessarily liked her.

Worth a read, despite a few issues with the ending!

Looking for more book spoilers? Check out all of my spoiler reviews!

Thank you to Atria Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.