Katherine Harbour's Blog - Posts Tagged "haunted-house"

The House
Delilah has returned to her hometown to attend her last year of high school. Her parents are bland, non-entities. When she sees a boy who interested her when she was a kid--the strange, tousled Gavin--she strikes up a friendship with him. There's an instant attraction and a steamy chemistry between them. Delilah's confidante is her best friend, Dhaval.
The third main character is Gavin's house, the house that raised him after his mother vanished when he was a toddler. The house is alive. Food appears, clothing is laundered, a hall table with clawed feet roams the halls at night. Gavin knows he's had a strange upbringing, and when Delilah --who loves horror movies and scary things--meets House, she's fascinated.
Mixed with the romance, this story is clever take on the haunted house trope, as the house becomes darker, displaying a sinister jealousy, and finally going after Delilah.

White Is for Witching
Atmospheric, moody, and haunting, set in Dover, England, the story surrounds a twin brother and sister living in a boarding house with their father. Eliot and Miranda are mourning their mother. The house, an ancestral home, has its own personality--a possessive and malevolent one.
Miranda and Eliot escape to separate colleges and the house takes its anger out on the immigrant housekeeper in a bizarrely horrifying manner. Hint: It uses a mannequin.
When the twins return home, Eliot is worried but oblivious to his twin's chaotic mental state. (She suffers from pica and hallucinations.) When she becomes intimate with a Black girl from school, the house, using the voice of Miranda's ancestors, becomes outright hostile.
It's an eerie, unsettling tale for anyone who loves haunted houses and Shirley Jackson.

No One Gets Out Alive
Set in a low-rent boarding house in contemporary England, this is a horror story told in two parts. The first part is a haunted house/human predator narrative, where a young woman has to fight for her survival in a house drenched in evil. It is harrowing and gory and a slow burn. The second half is folk horror, and the young woman must battle a truly creepy, eldritch horror that may be an ancient child sacrifice gone demonic or a fairy-like fertility goddess called Black Maggie. Don't let the page count fool you--this is a page turner and essentially two books in one. DO NOT read this at night!

She Is a Haunting
The haunting takes place in contemporary Vietnam, in a house that is being remodeled by teenage Jade's difficult father. Jade and her little sister are on a conditional visit and Jade soon learns, after a number of uncanny events (insect creepiness, disturbing apparitions) that the beautiful house is haunted. The best ghost stories have vulnerable and smart leads, and a sense of cloying dread, and this book satisfies all of it.
The house's horrifying history is revealed as Jade struggles with her father, her past, and an evolving relationship with Florence, the beautiful and mischievous girl helping with the remodel.
I loved the atmosphere and the family dynamic, the blossoming romance. The haunting is fantastically weird, culminating in Jade's fierce determination to keep those she loves safe at any cost.