First - I'm so glad this got a new cover from the original because HUGE upgrade. Second - this is not a horror, and as always, mismarketing the book is gonna lend to reviews upset that the book is not what they think it's going to me. For how short the book is, it took a long time for me to get through, and I can't help but feel like it's trying to take on too much for how short it is. Generational trauma and racism are absolutely things that teens need books about, but I wish this had been longer to flesh it out more.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

I received this book for free from netgalley for an honest review.

Really well thought-out book with amazing characters and excellent setting. Great cover art too.

I have mixed feelings. I liked it and then I didn’t and then it kind of fizzled out.

Why was that ending so incredibly long? All that wasn’t necessary.

This one never really worked well for me. The set up is pretty standard horror fare - moving to a run down old house with a family on shaky footing. Institutional racism was an interesting element to include especially as it plays into the haunting. THe same can be said of the homophobia. The perspective on justice and revenge is a bit muddled and frankly a touch concerning. And there are a couple of scenes that are needlessly gruesome.

The premise of this story pulled me in but I had some trouble following the execution of the plot. It took longer than it should have for me to be told that Traci is the main character's mom, and I spent several pages wondering if Jeff was her brother or something before finding out that he's Traci's significant other. There seemed to be inconsistencies with how the ghost thing worked and little explanation as to why or how, and in general a number of inconsistencies with plot or character actions that seemed to be for convenience despite not making total sense. On several occasions it felt like significant things were being glossed over.
But overall, I had an enjoyable enough time reading. I wouldn't reread it myself but I would suggest it to others if it seemed a better fit for them than it was for me. The characters were likable enough for the most part, the mystery itself was easy to follow for someone who likes a simpler mystery (which unfortunately is not me), and LGBT+ representation is always appreciated.

My hopes were high for this book so when I received the ARC, I was so excited!

Unfortunately, that excitement ended quickly. This was confusing. I felt like there were too many "non-characters" for lack of a better term in the mix that really took away from our main characters.

Our two main girls Asha and Cole annoyed me.

I felt like Asha was entirely too negative for what she had going on. Yes, something sad and awful happened to her but she still had family and friends by her side. The way she acted was as if she was the only person left with any love to give in the world. I found myself rolling my eyes at her often. I think Asha's grandma said it best:

"I know you're going to take good care of yourself and those around you because it's what I taught your father, and it's what your mother and father taught you. Look, we all get into wrong things at different moments in our life, but it's your choice to move forward wishing others well. Justice comes fast sometimes, but most times it's slow and not a straight line."

The other one, Cole, I found to be hypocritical. She'd show up at Asha's house whenever demanding these weird adventures out of nowhere but if Asha did the same it was an "invasion" or "too much" or was told to "let it go."

I have to say if I were Asha, I'd also despise my mom and outright hate her fiancé. He was so petty! It was like a competition between siblings only the sibling is the petty adult about to be her stepdad. Weird comparison, I know. But that's what it felt like! He'd get her in trouble and the whole vibe was like a big "HA HA!" When her mom would turn around. So annoying.


Then there were our ghosts. I've read a ton of books about the supernatural and such but I've never heard of ghosts like these. One that just hangs into the ceiling? Looking at you? And then others who can just "drop" into you to talk to one another? But no one around you noticed? It's weird! And it didn't really make sense to me.

I also laughed that the ghost in the ceiling who could do nothing was the owner of the house! How would she not be the most powerful considering?

In terms of the story, this was more of a self-discovery than a mystery. The whole book you ask yourself what's going on only to realize it's REALLY about the two girls discovering they're into each other and not the mystery that gets wrapped up with a neat little bow at the VERY end.

I don't know. I just felt this could be better and I don't have much to say other than that. Nothing happened. It didn't scare me. I was never shocked with a good twist. It just didn't do it for me sadly. What got it three stars instead of two, was the description of the house. I love a house with some history to it.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Annick Press , for providing this digital ARC with me in exchange for my honest opinion.

Please check out this review (publishing 10/28) and many others on my blog, sweetbooksomine.com

To realize you don't belong where your legacy was bred is a very sad existence. I want to give the biggest and warmest hug to Asha, Cole, Sabrina and especially Trynne. If they found themselves trying to maintain their sanity in world like Asha's I feel for them. The world as vast as it pretends to be is not safe for the mixed, black or queer. I have no doubt Asha's truth will bring peace to a life like she did. Power to those who walk while taking the bruises.

Seventeen years old Asha Walker is dealing with her father in prison for embezzlement at his work. Her mother is taking Asha with her to the inherited house from Aunt Agatha in New Brunswick. They are both hoping for a new start. Locals believe the house is haunted. Asha agrees that it is. Asha doesn’t like her mother’s boyfriend moving in . Asha doesn’t feel welcome due to the racial prejudice of the town’s history. (Her mother is white and her father is black.). Asha is attracted to Cole, her next door neighbor. However, she is unsettled by having more encounters with ghosts of her family’s dark past.

Themes that the author touched on are: police violence, white privilege and colonialism. The plot of this story is slow paced. It does have creepy moments that I enjoyed. I m would had like more ghosts in the story. Overall it
is a classic haunted house story. . It’s also a powerful coming of age story, with difficult family and social dynamics as well as an incisive exploration of race, gender,and sexuality.

I DNFed this eARC at 15%. I couldn’t get past the tone of the narrator. May be for some people, but not for me.

Scheduled to post 10/22/22.

I thought A HOUSE UNSETTLED was a good story that excellently put a lot of things into perspective. Asha's situation as a mixed race kid with only her white mom around, moving her back to her ancestral home that's ancestral in a rich white sort of way and a conscripted Black sort of way, is a situation I can't possibly understand. But I thought it was worked into the story beautifully. How the ghosts centered around this primary theme, plus added patriarchy and obligatory heterosexuality and binary gender conformity, all added depth to the story that made it something more than a ghost story.

The focus was less on the haunting of the house and more on how history haunts a person, so I didn't find much of it particularly scary. But it definitely gave me WHITE SMOKE vibes from time to time. Where WHITE SMOKE was much more of a horror story supported by racial issues, A HOUSE UNSETTLED is more of a racial issues book supported by a horror story. The horror is secondary, but it works for the book.

I thought Asha was a wonderful character and while I thought she was irrational at times, I got why. Not only because of basic teenager stuff, but Delaney did a great job of building the pressure on top of Asha in a slow but steady way. By the end of the book, she was on the verge of breaking and I honestly couldn't see how it all was going to pan out. But I think everything worked out the way it should have, if not in the happiest of ways.

While not my favorite horror story, I can appreciate the breadth of storytelling here, and it really is a great, intricate story. Immensely impactful and at times chilling, I couldn't stop reading it.

4

A House Unsettled is a story about a girl named Asha who moves to a small town after a relative dies. Her dad was recently sent to jail for embezzlement and her mom has moved them back to where she grew up. The house is thought to be haunted. Once there, she meets a girl named Cole who she hangs out with, and develops a relationship. The book deals with topics like racism and accepting yourself. I thought it was a slow starter, but enjoyed it

Thank you to NetGalley and Annick Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A House Unsettled is the story of Asha and her mother who move into a relative's house after their passing. The house has a troubled past, however, and shows it through increasing paranormal happenings as they begin to restore the house. As Asha discovers more about what happened here, she can no longer ignore the past.

Usually I feel people are exaggerating when they say nothing happened in the first half of a book, but in this case it is absolutely true. Part 1 of the book adds little to the story, and could easily be condensed into a few chapters. I can easily forgive a slow start if it adds to the atmosphere of the novel or if the rest of the story is executed well, but unfortunately neither happened in A House Unsettled.

While I appreciated the attempts to tackle themes like bigotry, racism, and queerness in the novel, the execution took away from the impact these themes ultimately could have had. There is the root of a good message here, but it fell a bit flat and felt shoehorned into the final chapters.

Crossposted to goodreads at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5010857906

The writing was a bit all over the place and needed some editing overall, but the message was overall powerful and necessary so I would overlook those things and hope for some consistency in the final edits!

After her father is arrested for embezzlement, Asha and her white mother Traci move from the city to Traci’s family’s home. It’s an old, neglected house, located in the country, and as Asha and Traci begin the job of cleaning it up, Asha finds a spectral presence there.

Pretty soon, she discovers how her Black father’s family built much of the town, but were never welcome there, and her paternal great grandfather was wrongfully arrested for her neighbour Cole’s grandmother’s (Sabrina) murder. Also, Traci’s ancestors Aggie and Ellis, as well Sabrina all are haunting Aggie’s home.

To further heighten the tension, Asha’s stepdad Jeff and she are not getting along, and she and Cole are trying to figure out how they feel about each other.

There is a lot going on here. The writing was a little choppy, so I was not always understanding what was going on. The pacing also felt a little inconsistent. And though I knew the setting was in Canada, it took a lot longer than I expected to realize this was taking place in the Maritimes. I would have enjoyed this book more without these small complaints.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Annick Press Ltd. for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Actual Rating 2.5 Stars

CW: A House Unsettled depicts racism, colorism, aniam cruelty, homophobia

A House Unsettled was not for me I had a difficult time following along with the writing style. However, the messages within the book are really important. These themes would be easyily digestable for an younger audience, so I think overall A House Unsettled is worth checking out.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. It was a really interesting story, but there were parts that just left me confused. Mostly the confusion stems from a lack of description/story building of the main characters. I still flew through the book though, since I was interested in knowing what was going to happen at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Annick Press Ltd. for the ARC.

I did not love this. I tried hard to find something that I needed resolved to continue reading, but failed miserably. Asha was not relatable. The writing seemed choppy and disjointed. I did not finish this.

Please, read for yourself and make your own decision.

Thank you NetGalley for the giving me the opportunity to view this book.

Asha and her mom have moved back to her mom’s hometown in the country after her dad’s recent incarceration. They move into her great aunt’s house, which has seen better days after sitting empty for quite a while. While tensions rise and fights increase between Asha and her mom, she’s able to balance it by making friends with her new neighbor. But as she tries to settle into her new normal, she begins to realize that something is off about the house and its history.

I enjoyed this YA read overall. The author did a great job at incorporating suspense and creating moments that really spooked me. The atmosphere and setting descriptions were well written, creating an immersive read. I also quite liked the author’s writing style and turn of phrase – some of the descriptions were quite poetic with evocative imagery, which I highly enjoyed.

The characters overall were okay. Asha and Cole felt like the only two characters who were given any depth and development; Traci and Jeff were lacking to the point where it began to detract from the work. There were also some instances where Asha’s thoughts and decisions just didn’t make sense. For example, she was adamant she didn’t believe in ghosts at the beginning of the work. After a supernatural encounter, she just kind of accepts it without questioning anything, then a bit later decides it was just a dream. Instances like this made Asha feel less relatable and realistic as a character.

The author tried to tackle a lot of difficult themes with this work – having an incarcerated parent, having a poor relationship with a parent, racism, bigotry, queerness, generational trauma, and identity. On top of exploring these issues, the work is also supposed to be one of horror/suspense. I think because so much was packed into this work, none of these topics was able to be fully explored, which did detract from the book a bit.

Overall, this was a good, easy read that I enjoyed. I recommend it to fans of YA and light supernatural reads. My thanks to NetGalley and Annick Press for allowing me to read and review this book, which will be published on October 11th, 2022. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This story follows Asha as she moves into a new small town and realizes her house may be haunted. That is the simple explanation, this book has a lot more going for it, maybe a bit too much. I did enjoy this story and I liked the deeper topics of delved into, for example: identity and racism. But I felt that there was so much going on, not everything was fully fleshed out at times. This was an interesting story and I did like it, I just feel like I would’ve enjoyed it a bit more if it went in a different direction as a different genre. Still overall a solid debut and I’ll be interested to check out more from this author.