“A House With Good Bones,” A Spooky, Suspenseful, Read For This Halloween Season

Photo by Eve Hvarre

“Mom seems off,” and there’s a vulture sitting on the mailbox of Grandmother’s house.

That’s the first introduction Samantha “Sam” Montgomery gets when returning to her childhood home after her brother expresses his worry about their mom and her recent strange behavior.

Things appear even more odd when she walks in to find the house looking like a sterile carbon copy of how her “Gran Mae” used to keep it, and not the warm, bright and quirky style that her mother had turned it into after Gran Mae passed.

Throughout Sam’s stay, more and more “off” things occur, like finding a jar of teeth buried under Gran Mae’s precious rose bushes. Sam’s worry for her mother continues to grow too as her mother jumps at everything, and is looking over her shoulder as if someone, or something, is looming.

“A House With Good Bones” by T. Kingfisher is a humorous but suspenseful horror novel that takes place in a southern, North Carolina neighborhood.

Kingfisher does a wonderful job at taking a normal, average setting, and weaving in a unique, creepy story. Her cast of characters is fun as well, with our main character being an entomologist (scientist who studies insects and arthropods). Yes, there is a lot of bug talk.

While this novel wasn’t exactly “scary,” it was certainly unsettling. Kingfisher’s descriptions in various scenes add to the suspense and raise hairs on the backs of necks. She relies a lot on that suspense, which proves to be fruitful when the climax hits.

All the clues sprinkled throughout the novel add up in an interesting and well crafted way.

The novel was enjoyable, but I personally wish that some things would have been expanded on more as too many things felt like they were left unanswered.

A lot of the novel was made up of Sam’s inner monologues, which were entertaining and funny to read, but left me wanting more of the actual scenes and action.

I enjoyed the relationship between Sam and her mother, as well as Sam’s interactions with the other characters from the neighborhood that are important to the story.

The “bug talk” was interesting as well, as Kingfisher cleverly wove insects into multiple areas of the novel. Insects are cool, but people say they’re “creepy and crawly” for a reason.

“A House With Good Bones” is a great choice for readers who want something spooky and creepy rather than scary. It’s funny, relatable, and charming, but also creepy, suspenseful, and unsettling.

Overall, it was a 3.5 out of 5 stars.