“A House With Good Bones” review to read so the underground children won’t get you
Where do I start when it comes to this one? Other than I’m sure we can all relate to being told do or not to do something by our grandmother followed up by some sort of scare tactic as child.
A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher was the April pick for the Ghouls Who Read bookclub. A bookclub that I run over on my Instagram and through discord.
One of the most common comments that I come across while in other spooky book groups on facebook is that “T Kingfisher isn’t scary” to which I must calm my inner internet troll from making comments back to. This is normally paired up with reviews for The Hollow Places, another book that I adored by T Kingfisher. In short, yeah, A House With Good Bones and The Hollow Places aren’t scary in the sense that it’s not splatterpunk or have gore for the sake of gore featuring cheep jump scares. (the same conversation I have with my husband when it comes to reviewing horror video games)
When I first A House With Good Bones my first reaction was “Well… that was weird.” Now as I’m writing out a full review and not just a text to my bff, I still think it was just plain weird. Which is just the point. The story is very weird. What T Kingfisher does well is playing with that which we find completely mundane and normal, and pushing it as far as possible until it crosses over into something strange and frightful. Much in the same way The Twilight Zone would push the viewers into scenarios that were still very real, but pushed the limit far into the “what if” factor.
Our main character, Sam, is what I like to believe as a very relatable character. She is one that has to have all the facts straight. She is our normal factor in all the weirdness. She drinks box wine while watching British crime shows with her mother. She googles all her medical issues when something happens, and has a grandparent whose view on society is not quite up to date (cheers to everyone that has had to have heated family debates at a holiday with your racist and phobic family members) So when T Kingfisher starts to push our normalcy into the paranormal it’s done in a fever dream like way. Slowly introducing things that can be passed off with logic. Which is what Sam does. It’s not till she in confronted with a gollum made of roses possessed by the spirit of her dead grandmother that she sees how messes up things really are… for me I would have drawn the line with the jar of teeth buried in the garden.
Yea… I don’t like any body horror to do with teeth. So maybe the reason I enjoyed this book so much is that it touches on topic that are my personal phobias making me feel that impeding dread in the pit of my stomach.
This is the point where the reader is completely displaced from our real world setting with a very creepy Norman Rockwell knock-off diner scene. The weird factor goes up to an eleven on a scale of 1-10 at this point as our plot rolls on. Turns out Gran Mae was a bit more than just a racist, and is actually a cold heart sorcerer. While it seems to fall to the side the real reason why she has come back from the dead, she’s come back, and now that you haven’t behaved the underground children will come and get Sam.
I cannot think of anything worse than my childhood boogyman actually being real. The description of what the underground children looked like is gross. For those of you who have played Resident Evil: Village they are much like the fetus monster in the Beneviento house. Did I think I needed a body horror about a fetal grub humanoid monster, no. A giant normal maggot/grub would have been perfectly fine, but no, we had to take it one step further and have the horror of dealing with extended family members. That may not make sense now, but I do not want to spoil the plot too much for you if you haven’t read the book.
Again maybe it’s because this is something that personally makes me want to vomit and hide my head under a pillow but grubs and maggots are gross, so you will have zero surprise to find out I had nightmares about the underground children.
What did I rate the book?
At this point I’m sure you are wondering what I rated the book. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars. Could this change later down the road? oh yea. If it stick in my head and has me continuing to think about it long after I’ve finished, It will move up into the five star group.
Who would I suggest A House With Good Bones to?
If you’re a fan of indie horror genre and like a WTF moment this one is for you. there wont be any “horror for the sake of horror” here, so if you can’t do gore this one could be for you. If you’re a fan of The Twilight Zone which you may have been able to guess by the amount of time I mentioned it in this article.
If you’re curious as to what else I’m reading that may not have shown up as a full review or on my Instagram feed, feel free to add my over on my Goodreads account.
If you liked the book and want to grab a copy, consider using my link for the book so that I could get a little bit back if you decided to get a copy yourself.
