Reviews with content warning for Racism - The Spite House

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

The Spite House by Johnny Compton

16 reviews

limina's review

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

It was a fine book. It took a long time to get where it was going- there wasn't enough info for well over a hundred pages and then a big info dump. There were enough time jumps and perspective shifts that I had some difficulty keeping track.

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caidyn's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is a hard one to rate. I loved the idea of a haunted house, but I got lost with the more sci-fi elements that cropped up. Still a great read that I devoured in one sitting.

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jessreadreceipts's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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ruthlessreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Absolutely phenomenal haunted house novel! I'm kicking myself for not having started it sooner. The Spite House confronts one towns legacy of violent racism, bringing reparations to those who have been denied justice. But it's not just Spite House that has secrets, the Ross family is on a collision course to a reckoning with the past they've been running from and it all culminates in one harrowing event.

It's a horror novel, yes, but it's also about how far a father will go to protect his children, about grief, and about how the acts of the past ripple through time to affect us all still today. Powerful, deeply moving, and incredibly creepy.

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monsterofidaho's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

With an increasing number of relevant social thrillers to pick from, The Spite House is a masterful addition to the continually rising star that is the Black horror renaissance. Johnny Compton promises and delivers with a book that wholly deserves its comparison to Get Out. The Spite House, after all, is more than its 272 pages. It’s about the hypervigilance that comes with living in the world as a Black individual; family ties strained taut, starting to fray; and it’s about deep trauma passed down from generation to generation, compounding with each iteration. With differing points of view from chapter to chapter, Compton unfolds a network of characters who are all culpable when it comes to the horrors that take place in the Masson house. Even now that I’ve closed the book, there’s a piece of myself still rooted in this story; a piece that has taken up residence in the spite house on top of the hill.

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starrysteph's review

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The Spite House is a gothic horror tale revolving around parental love & protection, ancestral hauntings, and complicated karmic seeds.

We follow the Ross family (dad Eric and daughters Dess and Stacy) as they run from their mysterious past, desperate to improve their circumstances and find some stability. When an eccentric billionaire offers them a small fortune to stay inside a mysterious house and record potential hauntings, it’s too good of an offer to pass up. But of course everything isn’t quite so simple, and vengeful ghosts and complicated family histories soon intertwine in a deadly way.

If you tend to get irritated by horror story protagonists making absurd choices for no reason, you won’t find that here. The Ross family aren’t foolish risk-takers. They’re not intentionally charging into danger. They’re thoughtful and do safety drills. They’re logical and calculated. And they’re forced into the house out of desperation – which makes this story all the more compelling.

I enjoyed the multiple POVs, but could have gone without the one-offs of side characters and antagonizers. I would have appreciated being kept to a more limited viewpoint - so that I as the reader could uncover truths alongside the three Ross’, instead of being given reveals from the secret-keepers surrounding them.

I thought the pacing + flow was very well done. However, I would have loved more scenes of action & atmospheric horror inside the house. We actually didn’t spend a whole lot of time between its walls. Additionally, the history of the house was well thought out, but became a bit convoluted. This was a 300 page book and a lot of info was squished in.

Overall, this was an engaging read and a chilling story – I only wish the plotting & POVs were little less complicated and more expansiveness was given to the central family and terrifying spite house;

CW: death (incl. child death), gore, murder, child abuse, psychosis, war, racism, gun violence, mental illness, kidnapping, confinement

(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)

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