Another week in October, another spooky book reviewed on the blog. For this post, I finished Christina Henry’s The House that Horror Built.

A quick google search reveals that this author has already written a ton (19) of books, mostly in the genres of Dark Fantasy and fairy tale retellings. She’ been nominated for many Goodreads Choice awards (in the Horror Genre), and seems to have just generally been on the scene for quite some time (first published in 2010).

So, I’m a bit embarrassed to say that The House That Horror Built is my first exposure to Henry’s work, and that it wasn’t through some ‘best of’ list, or ‘must read’ promo material that I discovered the book, but by the increasingly rare yet perhaps most gratifying way to discover a book: I saw it on the shelf.

Or rather I kept seeing it on the shelf.

The bookends for the shelves at my local library are really just a bit of metal tubing, and so the cover of whichever book is on the end of the row is visible. It’s not really on display as we might think of library displays, but you’re not gonna miss it. You may not register you’re even seeing it but you are, each and every day until it’s a bit like a part of the landscape. And then one day, you wake up and decide you want to focus your reading on Haunted Houses during the month of October, and it’s the first thing that comes to mind, and it makes you wonder if you’re even in control of your life at all, or just some unwitting victim of your environment . . . or ya know, “Hey this looks good!”

And The House That Horror Built IS GOOD, with perhaps only some (IMHO) minor pacing issues towards the end. It’s not a story you’ll be afraid to read when the sun goes down — not like We Used To Live Here or even last week’s Mapping the Interior — but it is still a compelling story with interesting characters and something of a mystery to be solved by the end of the book. All this is sort of wrapped in the trappings of a haunted house story, with the added element of the main character being a horror aficionado whose job it is to clean a famous (and famously reclusive) horror director’s house filled with props and artifacts from his films.

In this way, Henry is able to pay homage to — and tap into nostalgia for — early horror films and genre staples. Interestingly, I think the inclusion of these films also manages to serve as a kind of shorthand for the author, who no longer has to spend a lot of time building suspense or backstory, but can instead reference a relevant movie or book in the genre and get the reader into the right frame of mind even sooner. Gillian Flynn’s The Grownup sort of did something similar with references to The Haunting of Hillhouse, The Woman in White etc.

Of course, no book is simply about one thing, and The House that Horror Built contains more than just spooky costumes, and the occasional twist (one near the middle I though particularly good). The book’s main character, Harry Adams, is not only a horror film aficionado, but also a single mother, and a runaway from an abusively Christian family, poor, and was at one point homeless. So lots to unpack there. And of course as she becomes more entangled in the life of the reclusive film director (Javier Castillo), there is also the complications of fame to navigate, with reporters, paparazzi harassment and stalking.

And to put a little cherry on the top, the story takes place in that sort of limbo period at the tail end of the Covid shutdown when masks and social distancing are still being strictly observed, but some things are starting to reopen. The main character’s son, Gabe, goes to school remotely some days of the week, and in-person other days. Folks are beginning to return to restaurants but not yet with enough frequency to hire a full staff.

These little details are not only some more small challenges for our hero to overcome, but I liked how their inclusion documents that period, and shines a light on the very real challenges that very real people faced during that time, without those struggles taking over the story completely. I’m not sure what the author’s intent in setting the story during that time period was, but I found it a nice addition to a story which was already doing so much so well.

My only real critique of the story, which I mentioned up above, was a bit of the pacing. Early in the book, there were many chapters with strong hooks pulling me into the next chapter, and often I’d wish for just five more minutes with the book to see what happened next (alas the irrefutable bounds of a lunch break bend for no one). However, as the we neared the end of the book, that pull did not feel as strong. Perhaps because so many more elements had been introduced, the main thrust of the story got a bit lost. When the end finally did arrive, it felt a bit abrupt. Like perhaps there should have been another chapter or something just to wrap things up. However, this might just be personal taste.

Give ‘The House that Horror Built’ a Read?

Yes! Despite a somewhat abrupt feeling to the ending, I really did enjoy this one. This author has a talent for writing interesting characters with A LOT going on in their lives and real ability for incorporating many disparate elements into the story. Before reading The House that Horror Built I would not have thought a novel about a Horror film director’s haunted mansion could also be about single-motherhood at the end of a pandemic, AND a lesson in setting a proper work-life balance with boundaries AND about so many other things.

Anyway, that’s all I have for this week! Has anyone already read this one? What was your favorite room in the house? What’s your favorite horror movie?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments! Looking forward to chatting about this one!