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A review by wandering_not_lost
A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
Please mind content warnings. This book depicts an abusive person as one of the antagonists, and though it is treated as the horrible thing it is, anyone with issues around being raised in an emotionally abusive family might want to tread lightly in reading this book.
I'm not much of a horror reader anymore, but this book did a good job of hooking me in. The book starts out quite slowly, with the protagonist going home, settling in, seeing things wrong, and then very eventually it starts ramping into seeing Creepy Stuff happening. It's a slow build, and several points I thought it was too slow. The protagonist's POV doesn't really help, since she is funny and wry but totally unaware that she is in a Gothic horror novel, if you know what I mean. We spend a lot of time listening to her internal monologue about the possible reasonable reasons that Creepy Things might be happening, when in reality you know right from the start that none of those things are true, and it almost comes across as...wasting the reader's time? But, I continued on on the strength of the characters and wasn't disappointed. Once stuff hit the fan in the last quarter, it was unputdownable and honestly quite emotional.
I'm not much of a horror reader anymore, but this book did a good job of hooking me in. The book starts out quite slowly, with the protagonist going home, settling in, seeing things wrong, and then very eventually it starts ramping into seeing Creepy Stuff happening. It's a slow build, and several points I thought it was too slow. The protagonist's POV doesn't really help, since she is funny and wry but totally unaware that she is in a Gothic horror novel, if you know what I mean. We spend a lot of time listening to her internal monologue about the possible reasonable reasons that Creepy Things might be happening, when in reality you know right from the start that none of those things are true, and it almost comes across as...wasting the reader's time? But, I continued on on the strength of the characters and wasn't disappointed. Once stuff hit the fan in the last quarter, it was unputdownable and honestly quite emotional.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Child abuse, and Emotional abuse