"The Spite House" had an interesting premise, but the writing style was just not for me. The pacing was too slow, and I had a really difficult time getting immersed in the story.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire for the ARC!

An excellent haunting ghost story and haunted house story! A father and his daughters on the run, he decides to take a caretaker position for a Spite house, considered the most haunted house in Texas. This story has multiple pov’s which I don’t always love but in this case you really got the whole story. Great for any horror fan!

A great read by this author. I definitely recommend checking this one out!
Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Eric Ross and his two daughters are on the run from a mysterious past - a past that they hint about, but do not fully reveal until the end of the book. They are desperate for money, because Eric can't provide references, and they are too paranoid to stay in one place too long. Then Eric stumbles upon an ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there. Provided the house’s horrors don’t drive them all mad, like the caretakers before them. The job calls to Eric, not just because there's a huge payout if they can make it through, but because he wants to explore the secrets of the spite house. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it'll help him understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, making them afraid to stop running.

I had never heard of a spite house before, so after I read this, I did a deep dive to find out all I could about them. That, in itself, was really interesting. This story was not only fascinating, but it was also creepy, and chilling. It was told in the POV 's of many of the different main characters, which I loved. The book has a gothic feel and was full of plot twists. If you are a fan of horror, then you will want to check this out.


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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this read that just did not work for me. When you say slow...I mean slow when it comes to this book. I was not enjoying it as it is and the fact that I read so much to get nothing from it, made it even worse. The book was easy to read but it was going nowhere for me. I just was not having a good time reading it. This is the second book this year that I read that expected you to love the book without a book being provided.

Wow...I just read that this is Compton's debut. My goodness, I expect some good things from him.

Southern Gothic set in middle of nowhere Texas, black lead characters. So much to unpack just there. The characters are realistic and exactly as relatable as they should be. Each one gets an opportunity to carry part of the story from their own POV. It does get a little confusing (wait, who's talking?), but that built some of the low-level fear/anxiety a good horror novel has in it.

The house...it isn't a character of it's own, like many a good haunted house story has. No, the Masson House harbors hauntings and haunted people. However, its haphazard construction feel does makes it creepy in its own right.

Overall, a solid first offering from a new voice. It's a good scary story and while not everyone's cup of tea, I can see a teenager or two staying up late to read.

1.25/5 stars! I don't really have anything good to say about this book. It was not adult horror and was laughably structured. This could maybe work as a YA scary fiction story if it was edited differently. But it just didn't work as a whole for me. Additionally, there were some major icky topics that I think a lot of readers would take personally. Overall, this book is just not it. 1 star because the cover is pretty.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

I enjoyed this fresh take on a haunted house story! I’d never heard of a spite house before this. There’s a lot going on in this book and we get several different POVs. I enjoyed the first half of the book the most, where we got to know Eric, Dess and Stacy. They had their secrets and were obviously running from something, but I didn’t realize how huge or scary their secrets were until almost the end of the book. It felt like there was almost too much happening at the end of the book, and everything wasn’t wrapped up nicely at the end, but it works in this case.

A can’t-put-down haunted house story.

On the surface The Spite House is everything I love in a scary story: a haunted house, a man with a shady past on the run, a child with mysterious abilities, and a too good to be true kindly old woman. Eric is on the run with his two daughters, and he comes across an ad for a job as “caretaker” for a house that may or may not be haunted. The money he would make from this job would set him and his girls up for a while so he goes for it. He has his own reasons for digging into the paranormal including an encounter when he was a little boy… but knowledge is going to come at a steep price.

Johnny Compton (in what I was shocked to learn is a debut novel) does an amazing job of drawing you in from the start, I was riveted and read the whole thing in one sitting. You think you know the story that you’re getting and suddenly he throws some curveballs at you! There are a couple of things that I wish we had the answer to, but unless we want the same fate as Eric we may never know…

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Right from the beginning you're hit with mystery, what the heck is going on with this family? Within the first few chapters there's a couple left leaning political view points that has absolutely nothing to do with the story, doesn't feel safe driving through "the red" with people that have blue lives matter bumper stickers. Laughable. Thankfully it was limited to that. Each chapter is dedicated to a different characters perspective, which was nice when you were looking forward to learning more about someone. It did make for some story overlapping and repetitiveness. Overall it was a slow-paced haunted house/ghost story. More mystery than horror.

This was really a 3.5 star read to me. I think that the first part of the book was very interesting. But then it falls more and more flat as Compton tries to explain the "Spite House." I think some of the origins should have been left fuzzy to make the mystery better. I felt pretty letdown by the time we got to the end of the book. It just didn't go together with what we had read before.

"The Spite House" follows Eric Ross who is on the run with his two daughters, Dess and Stacy. We don't know why Eric is on the run, but he's desperate for work. When he sees an advertisement talking about him staying in the Masson House of Degener, Texas. The woman who owns the house wants someone to stay there and take notes. After beating out some "ghost hunters" Eric and his two girls stay there and things start happening. Because it appears that Eric and his daughters have "helped" wake up the house.

There are other characters in this one, besides Eric and his two girls. We also follow Eunice (the woman who owns the house), Dana (she works for Eunice and knows more than she is saying), Max Renner (part of a husband and wife team who stayed at the house before Eric and his daughters), Millie (a reporter), Masson (who is behind the house being built) and others. The book follows everyone through a present and past timeline. The book doesn't manage to jump back and forth swiftly enough for me. I felt lost a few times because there's no set-up for some of the people and you have to keep reading to realize their connection to the overall story. I honestly thought that Compton should have just focused on Eric and his daughters and that's it.

The setting of the house was great and used to great effect. I wish that Compton hadn't tried to over explain the house's origins as I said earlier. The first lines in the book were similar to "The Haunting of Hill House" so that made me eagerly anticipate what came next.

The ending as I said was a bit of a letdown.

3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

This book had so many turns ... I really went into it thinking it was a very standardized haunted house story but there's so much more at play and I don't want to spoil it at all.

We follow the Ross family, Eric, Dess, Stacy, as they are running away from the life that htey knew and are trying to start over. They have spent the past year moving from motel to motel until they make their way to Texas, and specifically, the Spite House. Eunice, owner the of the Spite House, wants to prove that ghosts or something in the afterlife exists so she invites investigators to stay in the Spite House and if they can provide proof and not run out in panic they get a hefty sum ($$$$).

Again ... sounds pretty straight forward, right? But once we learn about the true motivations of each characters its like whoa ... wait, what?

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, but that's mostly out of personal taste because I don't like when horror mediums pull back the curtain and explains exactly why x, y, and z is happening. I personally like it when things are a little more up to interpretation.

Overall, really loved the Ross family, loved their journey and what a fun story about family, anger and .... spite!

Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Writing Style: 4
Cover: 5
Enjoyment: 4

This story is told in third POV through a plethora of characters. Ten, in total, from the dad to a journalist. I feel that they mostly stood out from one another, but I'm not sure every voice was needed. A few I agree on, others not so much, and their interactions are enjoyable. It's set in Texas and very accurate with its descriptions, and it includes roadtripping, ghost hunting, family bonding, and small town vibes. It wasn't as scary as I had hoped, but it was still worth a read. Fairly quick read, too.

*3.25 stars*

A solid haunted house story. Good atmosphere and creepiness. This was a really interesting take on anger and generational trauma.

There was a little too much repeating exposition for me. I would have appreciated learning about the history more organically through the interactions with the house and it’s ghosts and not having to have it repeated at several different points of view.

I felt like the pacing was a little off. The beginning started out really promising and then the middle just kind of lagged until the last couple chapters.

I would recommend this to someone who really loves a more cerebral and historical horror.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this work. All opinions in this review are my own.

I'll be honest, I put this book down because I was very confused. I had no idea what was happening and I really wanted to understand and enjoy this book.
Th writing style was easy to read and everything, I just feel like the book started in the middle of a story and did nothing to catch us up.

The beginning is really slow and it was hard to get into it at first. For a 272 page book, this was such a slow read.

I was not a fan of how many different POV's there were. I think there were 9-10 different ones. It made it tough to connect with the characters because we followed so many characters and it switched every other chapter.

I did enjoy the last 40% of the book, the pacing got a bit better. and the story also got more interesting. The ending was surprising and different, which I enjoyed.

I was reminded of the opening lines of Toni Morrison’s Beloved as I was reading this book. “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”

With a nod to Morrison (and of course Shirley Jackson), Johnny Compton has crafted a suspenseful gothic ghost story about a different kind of spiteful house that feels quite familiar (especially if you’re a seasoned ghost story reader), but also has some distinctive twists.

Eunice Houghton has been waiting for the right person to come to to the Masson House for years and solve the mystery of its curse. When Eric arrives with his two daughters, Dess and Stacy, Eunice immediately recognizes something different about Eric. She knows he’s hiding something, but he seems determined and capable - qualities that will be necessary for his grim task. However, that doesn’t ease her fears about bringing children into the house. She knows exactly what the house is capable of.

Eric, Dess and Stacy move in right away - motivated to solve the mystery of the house’s bitter ghosts in exchange for a large sum of money. As the house reveals its dark secrets, so too do Eunice and Eric. One such secret is of great interest to the ghosts in the house, and Eric is horrified to learn that it involves his young daughter Stacy. He knew they wouldn’t be able to run from the past forever, but what they’re running towards may be even more dangerous.

Taut, chilling and well-paced, The Spite House may not be a wholly unique horror novel, but fans of ghost stories and supernatural suspense will enjoy the detailed writing and recognize the many nods to horror classics. Eric wonders early in the novel, “What harm could a ghost do?” This is a pretty common sentiment in supernatural literature, and I always delight in witnessing a protagonist’s realization of how wrong they were to underestimate a ghost.

I really liked the ideas contained within this story. It had a great and original premise but it ended up being a mixed bag for me. Where it succeeded was in the creation of atmosphere. It manages to create a wonderful feeling of claustrophobia which does a good job of keeping the reader off balance and was integral to creating tension and suspense. Between the family’s paranoia and constantly being on guard to the weird layout of the house that seemed to be closing in around them, it imparted an eerie feeling of emotional suffocation.

Where this novel struggled was in maintaining momentum. I typically love a book with multiple points of views but this one had entirely too many. It bogged the book down and kept it from moving at a brisk pace and made it feel choppy. This detracted from it ever becoming truly horrifying. Still, I did love the originality of the premise and thought it was a really interesting take on a haunted house story.
Thanks to @netgalley and @tornightfire for this arc.

When Eric and his two daughters flea Maryland they stay in different hotel rooms on the way to Texas. He wants to make it there to the place he spent summers with his grandparents but there’s another reason. When they get close to their destination he season add four a house they say is haunted and to him it seems like an answer to a prayer. If they stay there a certain amount of time and report what happens he’ll get enough money to purchase his grandparents home and he and his daughters will have a safe place to live. After a quick interview with the homeowner he Stacy and Desi move in in the strangeness begins immediately but that isn’t the only thing they have to contend with. Not only are they still dealing with the reasons they fled Maryland but a reporter and a crazy man will have something to say about them staying in the haunted house. I found this book more interesting than spooky but I still enjoyed it very much. I also thought the narrator did an awesome job. I listen to headphone audio and half using the Kindle burden and I think I enjoyed the audio version with the narrator much better. That isn’t always the case but was the case this time. I would definitely highly recommend this book I have come to learn either you love or hate this book and I loved it. And highly recommend it. I received this book from NetGalley and McMillan audio but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forget any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Eric Ross, a father who left his entire life behind is on the run with his two daughters from a mysterious past. Unable to stay in same place for too long and desperate for money, Eric comes across a strange ad for a job as a caretaker at a house. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity and all that Eric will need to do is stay in the house long enough to keep a detailed record of everything that goes on within. The job offers a large payout but that's not all that Eric is after, maybe this job can help him solve his mysterious past.

I love a good haunted house story and this was an intresting take on it, I enjoyed reading The Spite House start to finish. The story is told from multiple POVs, this is something I love if done well and I feel that it was. Every character brought new information to the table even with parts of the story overlapping character to character nothing felt repetitive or irrelevant.

If you love haunted houses, family secrets, gothic thrillers, small towns then you should definitely check this book out, it goes much deeper than that but I dont want to give too much away.
Overall a really fantastic read and such a strong debut, I really look forward to seeing more of what Johnny Compton puts out in the future.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire, and Johnny Compton for sharing the digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my authentic review.