Many thanks for the eARC, Berkley Pub Group and Netgalley!

An openly sapphic gothic vampire book is long needed, especially one that doesn't explicitly criticize lesbianism. In 'House of Hunger', Alexis Henderson tells the tale of Marion of Prane, who is barely making it in the slums of a Southern city while her vengeful and ill brother spends her earnings on his addiction. After responding to a newspaper ad for a bloodmaid- a young woman who is enslaved to supply blood and companionship to their lords until they are retired at 25 and granted a lifelong pension that keeps them fed and well cared for- Marion heads north out of desperation and poverty.

Marion enters the House of Hunger, instantly drawing Lisavet's attention as her new mistress, inciting the wrath of her fellow bloodmaids and competitors for Lisavet's love.

A mysterious lady of the house, secretive servants, and a manor with secrets hidden beneath the floorboards and wood paneling are all features of this classic gothic story. You won't be let down if you're a fan of the genre, especially if you've been waiting since Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire for a sapphic vampire book.

This was a perfect book to kick off the Halloween season. I'll be interested in to observe Alexis Henderson's upcoming work.

An interesting spin on the vampire tale. It starts off really strong, unmistakably gothic and extremely visual, and it ended well. The middle drags just a little bit. The story takes a turn a little over halfway thru the books that I wasn't expecting, and it made the stakes much higher for the characters. I really like the way it ended.

The gothic vibe is probably the best part of the story and I loved being able to easily visualize it from start to finish in my head like a movie. I personally don't think this one is as good as The Year of the Witching simply because it lacks the creepiness and atmospheric tone of Henderson's debut, which is what I crave in a fall seasonal read. Still, the creative take on vampires will make it a fun addition to any fall/Halloween reading list this year.

Marion Shaw longs for a different life -- one of comfort and luxury, the complete opposite of what she has in the slums. She lives in poverty with her unpredictable but beautiful brother who is always trying to escape his past in smoke. Her time comes when she spots an ad in the newspaper for a bloodmaid -- someone who will devote their life to their master, even allowing him/her to feast upon their blood. Bloodmaids live in luxury in the North to the rich nobles there.

After Marion's blood is tasted and deemed a unique flavor, she is off to the House of Hunger, ruled by Countess Lisavet. She is just one of many bloodmaids there and will encounter obstacles, love, and debauchery. The walls at the House of Hunger hide secrets older than anyone knows (and more gruesome!). Will Marion get the life she wants, or will it swallow her whole (literally)?

I enjoyed reading this book immensely! I found Marion to be naive but likeable. SPOILER I did find it odd that she turned on Lisavet so quickly once she learned the truth. I liked that this is "based on history" about Elizabeth Bathory. A book I devoured, mostly because I liked the characters so much, and this was a glimpse into a different time!

*Thanks to the publishers for the ARC.

This book was a semi-slow burn romance with vampires? Leeches? Still not really sure what kind of creature the villain was. I will forever love Alexis Henderson’s writing, but this book moved very slowly and I didn’t connect with any of the characters. The mystery was good enough to keep me until the end, though!

House Of Hunger is the second book I have listened to by Alexis Henderson. I am thinking maybe this needs to become an annual tradition if she continues writing in the paranormal genre and releasing books annually. House Of Hunger is a book about vampires. In this world, sometimes life can be a struggle for young women. They do have an option at employment called becoming a blood maid. Basically this means they provide their blood to a wealthy vampire house and after they fulfill their contract, they get a whole lot of money for a pension. Marion has had a rough life, but she's beautiful and so she answers an ad to become a blood maid at the House Of Hunger. She leaves her old life completely behind and falls deeply into the world/society of the blood maids and also falls for Elizabeth, her employer. However, there's something sinister brewing just beneath the surface.

I was so invested in House Of Hunger. Talk about a perfect spooky season listen. By the end of the book, I was like almost closing my eyes -- but not -- as that's a bad idea while driving. It gets intense toward the end when all is revealed. The audiobook is narrated to perfection by Jeanette Illidge. It is 10 hours and 2 minutes long. I did listen to it at mostly 2x speed, just as I am feeling a little pressure to get through my TBR faster. However, it was really well narrated, clearly easy to follow along with what is happening. I would absolutely recommend this book for Halloween, Autumn vibes.

What a lush, sensual read! It's everything you want from something marketed as a gothic sapphic vampire tale.

The true champion of this story is the writing itself. Every word choice feels carefully selected to provide the most vivid and visceral response within the reader. There's this underlying sense of tension and unease that lingers throughout the book and continuously builds as the plot progresses. Henderson peppers in moments where the reader can almost forget how wrong everything feels before inserting a tiny detail that feels just off enough to wake you back to reality. It's incredibly unnerving, but so well done that I never wanted to put this book down.

The plot moves along quickly and kept my heart pounding pretty much the entire time. The overwhelming sense of impending danger lingers throughout, which makes a lot of sense considering the author's clear commentary regarding the plight of women and class dynamics.

My only small complaint is that the conclusion felt very sudden and I maybe wanted just a bit more. But after a book that kept me holding my breath and desperately turning pages, I'm willing to overlook that very small displeasure.

This is the second of Henderson's books that I've really enjoyed. Definitely adding her to my list of autobuy authors after this one.

Special thanks to Ace Books for an ARC in exchange for review.

After reading and loving The Year of the Witching, I was so excited to read this book! The story started off strong and then it lost some steam for me in the middle. The ending was good, but I felt it was a little rushed. I also would have liked more of a backstory on the other houses and blood maids as well. Overall, I did enjoy this book and would definitely read this author again!

It started off great. I was super intrigued. I was like oooh, it's a vampire book that maybe I'll like. I thought it was going to be a rags-to-riches kind of thing. The protagonist doesn't even seem like the same character near the end of the book. I have so many questions. Are the rich people actually vampires? Was I supposed to infer that? Why does blood have healing properties? Did I miss something? The ending just fell off for me. It had such promise in the beginning.

Thank you so much to #netgalley and #berkeleypublishinggroup for this advanced reader's copy for an honest review.

In a less than impressive follow-up to the thoroughly enjoyable "The Year of the Witching," Alexis Henderson takes on vampires. However, she fails to bring anything new to the conversation reusing trope after trope from the beautiful young servant who bleeds for their master to the monstrous life-sucker named after history's Elizabeth Bathory. Overall, the world-building was lacking and left the entire story feeling superficial and predictable.

Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums of Prane, a victim of poverty with few prospects, kept under the thumb of her tyrant brother Raul. Salvation arrives in the form of an advertisement for a Bloodmaid to the House of Hunger. Bloodmaids are a privileged position in Prane; the most pampered of servants who need only bleed for their masters to enjoy. In this gothic metropolis, it is not simply enough the wealthy live off the money and labor of the poor.

They must sample their blood as well.

Marion arrives at the House of Hunger, the most powerful of Prane’s aristocracy, and is received by its mistress, Lisavet Bathory. The Countess is a mysterious woman, presiding over hedonistic revelry, and Marion is soon lost in rivalry amidst the Bloodmaids. Cecile, the most favored of the Countess, feels threatened by a potential usurper and it soon becomes clear that camaraderie is in short supply within the House. Questions soon arise, such as what happens to Bloodmaids when their tenure is ended? Do the nobles only hunger for blood, or is there more they wish to take from their servants?

Marion finds herself drawn to Countess Lisavet in a storm of lust and passion that may well be her undoing.

Alexis Henderson rocketed to stardom with the publication of Year of the Witching and House of Hunger is an exemplary follow-up. Henderson knows exactly what makes the gothic novel work, combining lush and lurid prose with beautiful scenery. The limited location in the House of Hunger plays to the strength of the book, offering a tense and claustrophobic conflict as Marion grows increasingly wary of the chilling secrets Lisavet harbors.

Henderson’s strength is characterization. Marion is a strong lead and her fellow Bloodmaids are likable characters, so the reader cares greatly about the dangers that threaten them. Perhaps the best character is Countess Lisavet herself. Equal parts frightening and compelling, Lisavet is presented with a rare gravitas no matter how dangerous she grows.

With each chapter punctuated by increasingly ominous quotes by Bloodmaids past, House of Hunger is a novel as rich and dark as any blood shed by its heroines.

“Consumption is the highest honor.”


Marion Shaw is hungry. Not just for food and a better place to lay her head at night, but for the type of luxury and opulence someone of her station can only dream about. Then one day, her friend shows her a newspaper ad in jest, not knowing that it is exactly what Marion has been looking for to escape the dregs of the life that she has been living. “WANTED: Bloodmaid of exceptional taste…Must have a keen proclivity for life’s finer pleasures…Girls of weak will need not apply.” When Marion gains employment as the new bloodmaid to the mysterious Countess Lisavet, what follows is a twisty, bloody, gothic tale of ambition, greed, and all-encompassing obsession that is sure to appeal to lovers of works like The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling and A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson.

As in her debut The Year of the Witching, in House of Hunger, Henderson’s wielding of atmosphere and setting is second to none. She’s proving herself a master of gothic fiction, a subgenre that many attempt to break into but fail to execute properly. A work of gothic fiction is nothing without its descriptions—the visceral and uncomfortable ways that the setting seems to push its way underneath your skin, leaving a residue that you feel you’ll never be able to scrub off, that may have made its way into the very depths of your soul. A gothic novel is meant to be felt, experienced. And what an experience Henderson gives us in House of Hunger! In the first half of the novel, I felt as though I were walking the cold, dirty, smog-blanketed streets of Prane along with Marion, cigarette between fingers aching from cleaning floors, stomach near concave with hunger, wishing for anything--anything at all--to deliver me from a poverty that seems as though it’s etched into my bones. Marion is shown the advertisement for the bloodmaid position at the end of chapter one; not a long chapter by any means, but in that short amount of time, Henderson conveyed just how bleak Marion’s existence is and I was already rooting for her to take the position, despite not knowing the details. I, along with Marion, was ready to escape Prane, with its filth and decay eating away at any semblance of a happy life. Anything seemed like an upgrade, and I absolutely see why Marion wanted out.

Henderson’s gift of description transitions beautifully from the grittiness of Prane to the cold, lush nobility of the North, where Marion heads to become the new bloodmaid in the formidable and infamous House of Hunger, serving the young Countess Lisavet. The surroundings of the House of Hunger are wet marshlands, close to the unforgiving sea, and with an inhospitable air that Marion ignores for the sake of a better life—anything other than Prane is fine with her. The House of Hunger itself, with its name that should give an outsider pause, is a stone castle with all of the trappings of ill-begotten wealth and full of simpering courtiers looking for a good time at Lisavet's expense. The scene with Marion’s first encounter with Lisavet, a bloody meeting of twin flames in the middle of a party full to the brim with debauchery, was tense and erotic, overflowing with hints of the gore and intense connection that was sure to come later on in the book. All of this to say: the gothic vibes in this book were damn near perfect.


“One learns to make the object of their hunger love you. Because when they love you, they’ll do the emotional butchery themselves. It was you, Marion, not me, who cut open your own chest, reached into the wet cavern behind your ribs, cut your heart loose of its rigging, and offered it to me. I had only to take it.”


House of Hunger has a lot of themes that it explores, but my favorite by far was that of obsession. Not since Micah Nemerever’s These Violent Delights, one of my favorite books, have I seen obsession and manipulation like this. It was fascinating to see how ambition and hunger can breed obsession like a cordyceps fungus in otherwise logical people. Marion and her fellow bloodmaids of the House of Hunger were all susceptible, despite their feelings for one another—Lisavet and her needs came first--to hell with anyone else. We see Marion, a girl with a level head born and bred in the streets, with a clear vision of what she wants her life to be, devolve into a version of herself almost willing to pluck out her own teeth at the request of the woman she loves. We see women descend into madness and depravity trying to please someone who only sees them as objects to consume, a state of being that they knew at the beginning of their tenure but have totally forgotten as time passes and obsession eats away at the cores of their souls like maggots in a festering wound. I’ve seen some readers take issue with the character development of Marion, her seemingly sudden departure from the woman we meet at the beginning of the book. But I say that the change seems sudden because it is. I believe that it is intentionally sudden, because what is obsessive love if not a sudden and all-encompassing devolution of who you used to be as the result of being single-mindedly devoted to something you should have left well enough alone? Just because Marion is intelligent and goes into this job thinking she has a good handle on herself doesn’t mean that she cannot be wrong, and cannot get caught up. She was, and she does.


“You’re more than just a vessel to be bled.”


Needless to say, I loved this book. I knew after reading The Year of the Witching that I’d love anything that Alexis Henderson put out, and I’m glad that House of Hunger was everything that I hoped it’d be. House of Hunger is not only a tale of blood and obsession, but an exploration of the depths we’ll descend to to get what we want out of life, and the ways we fight to claw ourselves out from under the tightly packed soil of the graves of our mistakes, our dignity bruised but salvageable. Henderson’s writing has been such an inspiration as I traverse my own gothic horror and fantasy writing journey, and I’m so grateful to have her to look up to. I can’t wait to see what she graces us with next!

Gothic lesbian vampires is my actual kryptonite. I have never read about one I didn't love.
This was everything I wanted from a gothic horror. Simply amazing.
My only complaint is I wish we had gotten a little more explanation of the world. Magic or whatnot could've been expanded on just a little bit.

I really wanted to love this book, but names are a big pet peeve for me and I hATED the name Lisavet

That aside, this book was quite good. It follows a street-wise (...though, this could be called into question if you examine some of her dumb choices in the book), Marion who travels north to let novels feed on her blood. It becomes a mystery when one of her fellow bloodmaids goes missing, but things get violent before they get better. Pacing could have been better in the middle, but overall was better than other books I've read lately. This novel has a lot to explore within the backdrop of a horror-vampire-murder-mystery, including class, race, depravity, despair, power, wealth, gender, and friendship. It can be pretty graphic if you're unused to the genre, so be warned.

For a horror novel, it has a strong finale, which is usually where I personally find the genre to fall flat, so for that alone I feel it deserves a huge bonus.

Thank you to @berkleypub, @netgalley, @letstalkbookspromo for the #gifted copy.
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Marion was born in the slums and has grown up poor without parents. Her life has been tough. She is desperate for a new life, but is being a blood maid worth it?
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This book was right up my alley. It was fast paced and dark with horror and fantasy mixed. The way the book was written made it easy to leave it up to your imagination what a blood maid really was. Lisavet preyed on the emotions of these girls who came from nothing. She made them feel wanted.

Definitely some Trigger Warnings in this one- blood, death, gore.

This book has a great premise, and it is very compulsively readable but I unfortunately can't say that I loved it. The characters all fell a bit flat for me, the atmosphere while indeed a bit uncomfortable, never gave me a real sense of danger or urgency that would place the book in severely spooky territory. The world building was a bit too vague to leave me satisfied either. Major thing that I really enjoyed was the casual queerness of the world and the commentary on the ways that the rich and powerful routinely prey upon the poor and use their vulnerability to their advantage. The intrigue was certainly high in this book and as a result I couldn't put it down but I also can't claim this is a book that I will remember in month.

The grisly secrets that lurk in the basement of the House of Hunger are unlikely to surprise any reader familiar with even the vaguest themes of Gothic fiction or the specifics of the life of historical Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, but the way that Henderson largely refuses to look at the specifics of the horror head-on somehow makes everything even more disturbing. And the sense of tension and foreboding that slowly builds throughout the book’s pages is both enticing and propulsive—it’s incredibly easy to lose yourself in its breathless pace and breeze through it in a day or so. But take your time to sink your teeth into it Henderson’s tale if you can—this is a story that tastes best savored.

I could not put this book down! A great sapphic take on the countess Bathory that horrifying, sexy, and sapphic! To me Horror is at its best when it’s 1) queer and 2) exposing the worst parts of the world we inhabit and his book is that and more! A perfect read for spooky season!

Another short review because I just don’t have much to say. The premise of this was fantastic. A girl in dire straights becomes a Blood Maid.

This book shares the same insta-love issue that I found in Year of the Witching which was an immediate put off for me. I like it when the characters grow closer to one another. Although in this book it almost reads as an obsession than insta-love.

We’ve got a book that is very slow to get going. The first third or so is, to put it bluntly, boring. There’s a lot of characters and world introduced, characters that turn out not to matter later by the way. When it comes to the plot, it’s a bit of a mess and when things are resolved in the end, they’re done so quickly you get no real feeling of resolution.

The characters needed more development, the book needed trimming and more editing to really pull it together. There are things happening and yet it still feels as if nothing is moving. Marion as a character was someone I just couldn’t connect with. She was flat.

It’s something the entire book struggles with and I was disappointed. So I’m giving it a two (2) out of five (5).

I received this eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks to them and the publisher.

I haven’t devoured a book like this in a while, but this was so satisfying. It’s sapphic Dracula and it’s *delightful*.

This book is the complete opposite of the sophomore slump. It's even better and I loved The Year of the Witching.

This was bloody good! Such a vividly dark gothic horror read. Marion is from he slums of Prane where she wants for more, so when the opportunity of becoming a bloodmaid is presented she takes it. She journeys to the north to indenture herself to Lisavet, Countess of the House of Hunger. Once there, Marion befriends 3 other bloodmaids. Loyalties are soon tested when Marion moves up in ranks quicker than usual and learns the secrets hidden throughout House of Hunger. There are a couple steamy scenes, but this isn’t the focus of the book. The ending was nerve racking but in the best way! Fantastic spooky season read!