A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

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Reader Friends, sometimes I pull a bonehead move so bonehead it surprises even me. This delightfully horrifying book came out in March, which I read in January, and I didn’t tell you about it! Seriously?

From the Publisher:

"Mom seems off."

Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone.

She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out.

But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above.

To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.

As always, T. Kingfisher knocks it out of the park. Kingfisher has this way of making a book incredibly funny and incredibly scary all at the same time. The characters are remarkably relatable which makes the book even scarier. Sam is just an ordinary person who is going to visit her mom. It’s so ordinary! But what’s not ordinary is the way her mother has redecorated the house, ridding it of the eclectic clutter and replacing it with boring white walls and unsettling family portraits of unlikeable relatives. And the jar of teeth. The jar of teeth is definitely not ordinary.

The longer Sam stays with her mother, the more the house feels wrong and the more Sam becomes convinced that something is trying to harm them. And she’s not wrong. But it’s so easy to brush many of the experiences off, which is the scariest part to me! Kingfisher’s skill at making the mundane horrifying is a sight to behold.

It’s such a fun reading experience to have a book be both incredibly dark and unsettling, as well as genuinely funny and relatable. I found the story to be incredibly compelling and fast paced. The mystery was well plotted and all of the characters were fantastic.

If you would like to add this dark and twisted tale to your shelf, you can click on the cover above or here for ordering information.

As always, this post may contain affiliate links, including Amazon Associate links, and I may earn from qualifying purchases. Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.