A review by chelsea_is_booked
House of the Beast by Michelle Wong

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

House of the Beast is superb! Its a beautifully sad, dark fairytale like story about revenge. Its filled with rage, loneliness, and codependency. The prose is rich and reads like poetry in some areas. It's violent and deliciously gorey. The author even gives little illustrations throughout the story that pulls everything together in a nice little package.

The story follows Alma who is raised by a single mother that becomes deathly ill. In seeking ways to help her mother, Alma comes across who her father is. He's part of one of the four elder gods houses, specifically the one of the Beast. In exchange for helping Alma's mother she must leave with her father, sacrifice her arm to the beast, and train to go into the Umbral Plane to help her father become the beasts first arm. During the 8 years of training Alma is accompanied by a not so imaginary friend that helps Alma come up with plans of her own, revenge.

I can't praise this book enough! Its a debut novel even! There are all sorts of twists at the end. The characters are beyond morally gray. Every named character is given life. My only criticism is this was advertised as a romantasy and its not. There is building of relationships but I would have never tacked romance on as a genre for this. I would call it a horror fantasy and it doesn't need romance. Its beautiful without it.