The September House

The September House

by Carissa Orlando

Blurb:

A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.

Margaret is not most people.

Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.

My Reaction:

I chose to read this knowing only that it was recommended by someone, somewhere, to people who want to read books about haunted houses.  (Or at least that's all I remembered by the time I got around to reading it!)  Right off the bat, I was intrigued. It obviously wasn't your typical horror novel.  In fact, I'd describe this as "cozy horror", because it felt like a mash-up of rather gory horror and cozy mystery.  It wasn't what I expected, based on the cover, but it was interesting.  

Unfortunately, I found the book fell a bit flat for me.  I don't regret reading it, but it wasn't completely satisfying.  I'll discuss why below, because there will be spoilers.  Final verdict: Not my ideal ghost story style, but if you're up for something different, it's definitely that!  

SPOILERS

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Okay.  Reasons I didn't fully enjoy this book:

Katherine is extremely bratty and annoying.  Couldn't stand her, to be honest. 

The cursing really annoyed me.  There was so much of it, and I found it so unnecessary.  

The gore isn't for me.  I dislike gory stuff, though I found that when the gore really ratcheted up, it was more boring than anything else.  Gore in movies and TV shows bothers me more because of all the sounds and, well, the visuals, but when I'm reading and it's just one gory thing after another, I find my mind shuts off and I skip over it.  I don't get anything from it, so why read it?  I'm not the best, these days, at visualizing things from books, anyway—more of a dialogue person, I guess—but when it's something I don't even want to imagine, why bother?  But yeah, that's another strike against the book for me. Not a fan of gore.  Give me eeriness, psychological horror, and a creepy atmosphere instead, please. 

The domestic abuse angle... I don't know, I guess it was there for a reason, but I felt it didn't pay off as much as expected.  

It was completely predictable that Hal would be discovered in the basement. 

The grand finale, final battle, or whatever you want to call it was oddly anticlimactic.  That was the part where I just started skimming—because, okay, I get it, the ghosts are all banding together and tearing Master Vale apart, and it's really disgusting and brutal and... yawn.  Once it's clear where this is all heading, I don't need the play-by-play.  Let's just get to the next part of the story.  So I found it boring, but worse, it just didn't make a lot of sense to me.  If all it took to vanquish Master Vale was for the other ghosts to band together, I don't understand why it took them so long to do it.  It doesn't make sense to me that it was so easy—or if it was so easy, why no-one else had done it already.  Yeah, Margaret was defending her daughter, like she (finally) defended her from Hal.  ...Okay?  I don't know what else to say, but it was not a satisfying ending, and I feel the book didn't give satisfying explanations for the ghosts' stories, either.  Not sure what I wanted, but not this. 

The positives?  
I really liked the housekeeper ghost.  The idea of a ghost who makes you supper and offers friendly chit-chat was oddly appealing to me.