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In this post, we’ll review 3 books featuring haunted housemates! Is the house the problem, or are the people just a little … off? You be the judge!
There’s something irresistibly eerie about spooky houses in fiction—they’re the ultimate characters themselves, full of secrets, shadows, and things that go bump in the night. These 3 thrilling reads will invite you to step across the creaking thresholds of some truly unsettling homes and introduce yourselves to their haunted housemates.
In Cherie Priest’s The Family Plot, a salvage crew unearths more than just dusty antiques. Pick up Gareth Rubin’s The Turnglass, and behold a labyrinthine tale of dual mysteries unfolding in a Victorian manor! Marcus Kliewer’s We Used to Live Here, tells a bone-chilling tale that blurs memory and terror! Each story will leave you questioning whether you’re ever truly alone at home …
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Happy Reading, Friends!
Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"The Family Plot" Book Blurb:
Music City Salvage is owned and operated by Chuck Dutton: master stripper of doomed historic properties and expert seller of all things old and crusty. Business is lean and times are tight, so he’s thrilled when the aged and esteemed Augusta Withrow appears in his office. She has a massive family estate to unload—lock, stock, and barrel. For a check and a handshake, it’s all his. It’s a big check. It’s a firm handshake. And it’s enough of a gold mine that he assigns his daughter Dahlia to personally oversee the project. Dahlia and a small crew caravan down to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the ancient Withrow house is waiting—and so is a barn, a carriage house, and a small, overgrown cemetery that Augusta Withrow left out of the paperwork. Augusta Withrow left out a lot of things. The property is in unusually great shape for a condemned building. It’s empty, but Dahlia and the crew quickly learn it is far from abandoned. There is still something in the Withrow mansion, something angry and lost, and this is its last chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever.
What did we think?: 3 Stars
The spooky Withrow house had a lot of potential, but the story got bogged down too much in the salvage business, for my liking. While I like a bit of day-to-day happenings to balance out the ghostly, about 80% of this story was just a description of what was next on the demo to-do list. The ghosts are identified fairly early on, and they’re not overly threatening. There’s a weird mix of the characters gaslighting each other and pretending they’re not seeing anything – and then talking about all the ghosts they’ve seen on previous salvage jobs, which felt weird and frustrating at times. There was a confusing example on p36 about how lazy Bobby is, that had me scratching my head …”All you need to know about Bobby is this: good work, completed on time, zero bitching. Pick two.” … every two I pick seems good lol. I think one of the scariest things that happened in my opinion, was when Kate …”dropped her bundle of nighttime supplies on the closed toilet lid” (p112). Gross. Why put your PJs on the old ghost toilet? Also, she only makes $20k a year doing salvage?? She needs to ask the ghosts for more I think. There’s one point where Kate tells Brad he can just leave if he’s “going to run around squeaking like a girl every time you hear a footstep you can’t explain” (p285) which seems to be a weird thing for her to say, as she’s a girl and running the job. She also puts on some annoying bravado – ‘I can take it. I can take her...’ (p302) that seemed quite naff as they were all trying to bug out of the house and not fight the spirits. Ultimately this was a bit of a disappointment for me, but I did like spending some time in the old spooky house.
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Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"The Turnglass" Book Blurb:
1880s England. On the bleak island of Ray, off the Essex coast, an idealistic young doctor, Simeon Lee, is called from London to treat his cousin, Parson Oliver Hawes, who is dying. Parson Hawes, who lives in the only house on the island – Turnglass House – believes he is being poisoned. And he points the finger at his sister-in-law, Florence. Florence was declared insane after killing Oliver’s brother in a jealous rage and is now kept in a glass-walled apartment in Oliver’s library. And the secret to how she came to be there is found in Oliver’s tête-bêche journal, where one side tells a very different story from the other. 1930s California. Celebrated author Oliver Tooke, the son of the state governor, is found dead in his writing hut off the coast of the family residence, Turnglass House. His friend Ken Kourian doesn’t believe that Oliver would take his own life. His investigations lead him to the mysterious kidnapping of Oliver’s brother when they were children, and the subsequent secret incarceration of his mother, Florence, in an asylum. But to discover the truth, Ken must decipher clues hidden in Oliver’s final book, a tête-bêche novel – which is about a young doctor called Simeon Lee .
What did we think?: 3 Stars
The format of this novel in the tête-bêche style was a fun gimmick – flipping the book around to gain a whole new story from the other side. I started with the 1880s side, and – while a little slow – it held my interest to the end of that section. Was a bit jarring coming to the 1930’s chapters, with different characters and a shift in tone. I didn’t love the first instalment of the story enough to care too much about how it would all link together, unfortunately. I enjoyed the intrigue of Florence being locked in the glass cage, but found the journal entries of the Parson to drag on a bit and the font used was hard to read. On the whole, this is a fun format to read in & readers of split-timeline mysteries may get a kick out of it.
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Series or Standalone? :
This is a standalone novel.
"We Used to Live Here" Book Blurb:
Young couple Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they got on an old house deep in the mountains. One day, a man knocks on the door. He says he lived there years before and asks if he can show his family around. As soon as they enter, strange things start to happen, and Eve is desperate for them to leave and never come back. But they can’t – or won’t – take the hint that they are no longer welcome. Then, Charlie vanishes, and Eve begins to lose her grip on reality. She’s convinced there’s something terribly wrong with the house and its past inhabitants … or is it all in her head?
What did we think?: 4 Stars
This gave me serious ‘House of Leaves‘ vibes, and is definitely more of a trippy worm-hole fever dream than a haunted house book as such. I would have loved to have learned more about the portals leading to and from the locations, and – must admit – the ending left me scratching my head. Aside from a few weird choices, the characters were solid enough to carry the story – and there are some great ideas here. I’d definitely pick up another book by Kliewer and can see why this book has a fan base already.
“Some say it’s a sanctuary for some kind of ancient entity. Some say it is a sprawling labyrinth that spreads across space and time and traps unsuspecting civilians in a maze of never-ending terror.” (p204)
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