Ratings51
Average rating3.7
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
Margaret is such a unique narrator! Margaret kept me off balance through most of the book. I was totally sure I knew what was going on and then something unexpected happened. Some of the twists I knew, but others were a surprise, especially the resolution. It made the reading experience so much fun that I read the book in one day. I haven't done that in a while.
There are rules to these things. Everything is survivable.I haven't really gotten into the subcategory of horror of haunted houses so The September House was one of the first. One of the reviewers I follow said it felt similar to [a:Grady Hendrix 4826394 Grady Hendrix https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1542284521p2/4826394.jpg]'s style of writing. That really spoke to me especially in the first act. Margaret will not move out of her home - regardless of who else inhabits it. She can handle the bloody walls, her furniture being moved around, the ghosts in their various forms of brutality that they had suffered. There are rules and she simply has to follow them. She just has to make it through September.
I really enjoyed this. A really interesting story relating a haunting to DV. I thought this was really unique and a good read. I liked the mother/daughter dynamic exploration as well.
Oh, my, goodness. This book is going to reside in my top ten for the year!
Margaret has found her dream home, and when things go crazy during September, well, she has found a way to deal with them. There are rules after all. Hal, her husband, is not quite as thrilled with the September events, but throughout the first three years, they learn ways to manage - until Hal has had enough. He is determined to leave, and wants Margaret to leave with him, but she refuses. There is something about the house, something that draws her back, unwilling to let her go too far away.
Master Vale, the Pranksters, Fredericka, everything with the house calls to her, and she is determined to keep her house, no matter what.
This book, sigh, was fantastic. I was not ready for it to be finished. I wanted more. The book just refused to let you walk away (there are rules after all), and this is easily a “once you start, you will not stop” read.