What a delight for me to read Haunted Houses. I got an ARC through Netgalley, and then realized it was originally published in French in Quebec. I just can't bring myself to read a translation of a book originally written in French, especially if it was written by a Québécois author. So I bought a copy and read the original. The story is familiar but it's the setting and I writing that I loved. Veda is a married real estate agent with three sons. Chance brings her into contact with a former lover. Moving back and forth in time between her youth and her current life, Veda's past with her former lover is revealed as is the answer to the question of what she will do about the encounter. Much of the terrain Veda covers in her early years brought me back to my own youth in Montreal. But besides the treat of reading a book set in a familiar and beloved setting, there was something slightly offbeat about Veda that I really liked. And, again, the writing was lovely. I don't know how this all plays out in the English translation but I would suggest that it's worth a try. Even though I ended up reading the original in French, thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy -- I'm not sure this one would have gotten on my radar otherwise.

Hunting Houses by Fanny Britt is an excavation of memory, an internal contest of decision-making and resolve with a clemency for the imagination and the idealism that imagination usually brings especially when it comes to those left behind in a person’s past.

In this case, it’s Tessa’s thoughts that centre the book, her revelatory opinions on a short, but passionate history through love and sexual emancipation, and a particular man, Francis, at the centre of her repressed idolatry and focus.

A former student of vocal music, she resigned instead to the whim of her desires in relationship to eventually fall into and graduate with credits to become a successful realtor, eventually marrying a well-suited man who loves her wholly and tenderly: Jim, a stable anchor and partner, the father of their three young sons, and a successful and professional orchestral musician whom she returns to in the routine of love and domestic life.

As Tessa takes inventory of the number of houses she showcases and manages to sell on the market, she does so with a keen and receptive eye, taking stock of the homes, as she does mentally coupling them with pre-judgements of their respective owners.

The style in which she does this, is in the same way she recalls the people and events in her life from: her supportive and doting mother, Paule; her easy-going, earth-loving adventurer of a brother, Étienne; and her confident and spontaneous childhood friend, Sophie.

Together, they form a network of those who create for her a backdrop of her identity, some the reader can assume is a catalyst to her uncertainties about herself and her life choices—especially the one she resigns to in wanting to meet Francis again upon a chance run-in as realtor to his wife, Évelyne, and the extension of herself as found in her fabulous house.

The book feels and almost reads like a giddy soliloquy filled with the romanticism of one’s own fantasies and self-indulgence; the idealism of love found in an idea of a man, rather than the man himself; a sort of emotional reckoning with an unrequited past.

A beer and a bar and the power of nostalgia—along with the sobriety of time, change, and real life, close this novel to its inevitable end.

It is a book not only of hunting houses, but of hunting for answers to the main character’s lifelong search: in all the transitions and journeying in someone’s life—what and with whom can one truly make a home?
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Characters: 3 stars
Plot: 3 stars
Language/Narrative: 3 stars
Dialogue: 2.5 stars
Pacing: 3 stars
Cover Design: 3.5 stars
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Zara’s Overall Rating: 3 stars
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Note: I also included the author's bio and links to connect with the author on social media.