A Haunting Month

September House by Carissa Orlando

Margaret lives in a haunted house filled with pranksters (aka ghosts). Every September, however, the house starts to bleed. The blood starts pouring from the walls and the sinks. The pranksters start acting out. When Margaret’s husband goes missing, their daughter, Catherine, comes back to town to figure out what’s happened. Margaret doesn’t want Catherine to find out about these pranksters in their haunted home. How will she balance keeping her sanity with hiding everything from Catherine.

The first half of this book was confusing at times but when things start ramping up, you’re in for a treat. There are pretty powerful themes discussed in this book that I really enjoyed. You start to understand the characters and what drives their decisions but it all comes to light when the plot twist hits.

I was skeptical in the beginning but that third act was crazy. The twist and then the other twist, sooo good

⭐⭐⭐⭐
Review on Fable Review on Goodreads

Like I mentioned above, I went into this book completely blind. I knew it was a horror book so I like to not read reviews or the synopsis. That way I have NO SPOILERS. I really enjoyed the storytelling and the overall comedy horror aspects of the book. I will say that there were many moments in the book where I wanted to throw something at Catherine for being so unbearably rude with her mom, Margaret. There were reasons for the hostility but I still wanted to yell at her to stop.

“The walls of the house were bleeding again. This sort of thing could be expected; it was, after all, September.”

When the twist comes during the third act, it leaves you completed stunned and unsure if this is an unreliable narrator or a spooky story. Many issues are revealed and it gets pretty dark so I wanted to share some trigger warning. This book dealt with a lot of tough issues: domestic abuse, grief, murder, and alcoholism. If these are too triggering for you, I don’t recommend reading it. However, if this doesn’t faze you too much, then definitely add September House to your reading list for October (or September?)