I’m glad I read The September House….in October! This genre-bending horror story was the perfect book to kick off this month. It’s the haunted house story you didn’t know you needed. As an admirer of any haunted house tale, this one revamped the classic trope and turned it on its head.
To kick things off, the protagonist knows the house is haunted. So often, it’s a slow burn with the recent homeowners discovering overtime that their dream home is more than what they bargained for. This was not the case in The September House.
I also thought I had this story figured out. News flash: I was wrong. I would’ve been 100% on board with my original prediction of the ending. However, Carissa Orlando kept me on my toes until the very gory end.
Summary: 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.
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