Source: DRC via NetGalley (Macmillan – Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire) in exchange for an honest review
Publication Date: March 28, 2023
Synopsis: Goodreads
Purchase Link: Amazon

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Why did I choose to read this book?

In the last 7 years of blogging about books, I’ve learned what I like and don’t like. I am surprised to find that I like horror novels a lot more than I thought I would, and I am a wicked sucker for a haunted house story. A House With Good Bones promised not only a haunted house but generational trauma and legacy so I requested it immediately from NetGalley.

What is this book about?

Samantha gets a call from her brother that her mom isn’t acting right. She’s an insect archaeologist but when her current dig in Arizona uncovers human remains and has to be put on hold, she takes the opportunity to stay with her mom in North Carolina. She and her mom are close, and she loves her mom, so the fact that certain things are out of sorts are very obvious to Sam. This book is about uncovering what is bothering her mom and how Sam has the power to help save everyone in their small neighborhood from the consequences of her ancestor’s actions.

What is notable about this story?

Hello yes, I appreciate positive, fat representation. To see a character who is fat and healthy just living her best life was a refreshing element. There was the inclusion of her grandmother’s t(h)aunts (LOL) about her weight, but that fueled the forward motion of escape and recovery from the past.

THE HANDYMAN THAT WORKS ON THE HOUSE IS SO GODDAMN ADORABLE. Seriously, I need a sequel to this that is just Sam and him getting together and fighting supernatural forces together.

The supernatural is just normal. Gail, a neighbor from down the street, is a witch. Everybody just accepts it. She can do some magic and helps when she’s needed. Inclusion of this kind of magic person also felt nice, like they can just live normal lives and people leave them alone about it.

I appreciated that Sam’s mom (Edie) did enough to stop the cycle of parents being cruel to their children. Edie has such a strong and loving bond with both her children (Sam and her brother) and does everything she can in this book to keep the issues with the haunting from affecting them. Edie could have easily been just as mean as her mother had been to her, but she chose not to be. I really respect that Kingfisher included this as a thread in the tapestry of escaping the influence of terrible relatives.

The vultures were REALLY COOL.

I laughed so many times reading this book. The humor is delightful.

Some haunted house stories feel really dark and have deep mysticism woven into them. Haunted houses are often a larger than life foe, hungry and full of intent. They want to fuck you up and then they want to be left alone. Haunted houses are usually in the middle of the woods, at the end of a long drive with a creaky gate, or at the top of a windy hill or cliff. Kingfisher breaks with those trends and has written a story that plops a haunted house in the middle of everyday life. It’s on a street with several other houses. There are block parties and barbeques! Sam’s grandmother had the best rosebushes in the area!

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – I love it when an author takes something we are used to seeing as hidden/broken/shunned/etc and makes it a normal part of every day life. THE NEIGHBORS COULD BE LIVING IN A HAUNTED HOUSE makes this all the more scary.

Was anything not so great?

I didn’t really walk away with any criticisms. If I had to say one thing, it was that the fat representation nods sometimes took me out of the story. Sam would go on mental rants about how doctors will celebrate weight loss even if it meant having a leg cut off (for example) and it felt a little like a soapbox moment – a moment that wasn’t necessary for the story’s progression but a statement about the world in general. A small quibble, and definitely not enough to keep me from devouring the book.

What’s the verdict?

5 stars on Goodreads and if you are a fan of horror you’ll definitely want to check this one out. It takes a lot of the tropes and asks you to think about them differently and my brain enjoyed that very much. This one is a confident purchase recommendation, but definitely request it at your local library too!

(I received this book from the editor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

I’m a huge fan of haunted houses, shadows that move in the darkness, voices that whisper horrors, errors from the past that come to life…
And I thought I would have it all in T. Kingfisher’s A House with Good Bones. It did start strong: a mother who isn’t acting as always, the longing shadow of a grandmother who was not the figure one associates with grandmas… The pacing was slow, but never felt stagnant. Sam, our main character, could have been better fleshed, but her thoughts felt real when dealing with something that could potentially mean the deterioration of the mental health of someone you love.
Then the pace changed, something lurked in a photo, something was found in a jar, the family roots started growing even bigger and darker… and it lost me. There is one exact moment, one exchange of information, when even my expression changed when reading.
And then the plot twist appeared out of nowhere (which I will not mention, and maybe it’s not even a plot twist at all but just a change in tone) and I ended the book with the sensation of having started something and then ending something completely different (which, consulting the reviews, people seem to absolutely love, maybe my mind played with my expectations and just could not bear the leap of faith).

Kingfisher’s writing is superb, as usual. The description of even the littlest of details can evoke an image that stays with the reader. And the dread is there, I can assure you, from the hints in conversations, to the colour in the walls, to the vulture standing in the mailbox.
It just turned up that they were not, as I first thought, winking at me, but to a completely different audience.

This is an excellent southern gothic thriller for springtime!
Sam is an entomology, the study of insects and their relationship to humans, the environment, and other organisms. After one of her latest projects gets derailed, she heads to her mom’s for an extended visit. Usually after a long day, Sam loves to watch murder mysteries while drinking boxed wine. A woman after my own heart. When she arrives she finds the house looking oddly like it used to when her grandmother was still alive & her mother is acting all kinds of strange.

Insects, flowers, a haunted house…vultures! Sounds like quite the springtime read. I enjoy T. Kingfisher’s writing. She has such a way of drawing me in, making me want to know what happens next but still giving us this little bit of humor that makes me come back for more. It’s the kind of horror I can usually get on board with because I’m never really scared and almost always find a chuckle somewhere. Sam was such a hoot and being a southern girl myself, I found her delightfully relatable at times. The magic in this story was somewhat interesting yet lacking in some way…? I can’t quite put my finger on it…maybe I wanted a little more to the story as a whole. Overall, fun and quick read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for a digital ARC.

If you had told me before reading this that I would want a pet vulture, I would have never believed you, but here we are.

Samantha's brother is concerned about their mother. "She seems off," he said. So, when her work project gets postponed, she travels to North Carolina to see for herself. She is immediately concerned. The walls and decor of the house, usually bright with color, are now painted off-white. Old Confederate photos hang on the wall once more. While this is peculiar, she is most concerned because her mother also appears unwell. She has lost weight, jumps at the slightest noise, and is misremembering the past. She is also suddenly religious and no longer tolerates cursing in the home; she is becoming more and more like Sam's dead grandmother; something is definitely wrong. The longer she stays in the house, the more things become worrisome. Sam, a scientist, shrugs off the weirdness with logic and rationale—until she can't.

T. Kingfisher expertly crafts this Southern Gothic novella, writing about ordinary characters doing ordinary things in a ordinary houses while slowly building tension one unordinary incident at a time.
As the story unfolded, I could not stop reading. I finished this in one day. I had to know what was happening. The ending was superb. I will happily read anything T. Kingfisher writes—even a grocery list.

Further, I read and listened to this at the same time. Mary Robinette Kowal, the author of the Lady Astronaut series, narrates this beautifully.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, Tor Nightfire, and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars, rounded up.

To start, I want to say that this horror book is good fun. I had a GREAT time reading this. The blend of humor along with creeping atmosphere and a slowly building sense of dread made this book engaging and entertaining from the first page to the last! I'm finding that humor tinged with comedy is a combination I love in fiction, and this book scratched that itch perfectly. I think that was a fantastic effect of T. Kingfisher's placing incredibly normal and relatable people in deeply unsettling situations. This book lost a half star only because I felt like a couple of its running jokes were repeated one too many times, although I do think that added to the author's portrayal of the monotony of small-town North Carolina. As someone who grew up in small-town North Carolina, I feel like I can say that T. Kingfisher absolutely nailed the setting.

In terms of the horror, I loved how this book began to include unsettling details early on and slowly built up until I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was going to happen to Sam, her mom, and their friends. The pacing was excellent, and it never felt like the book was dragging. On the other hand, I also never felt like the story was progressing too quickly, and there was plenty of time for the mystery to build. As the story progresses, we're given a number of different possibilities that might explain what's going on, with each feeling as plausible as the last. I found that as the spooky events evolved, I was jumping around from one explanation to another right along with Sam and trying to figure out what was going on.

The last thing I want to mention is the characters. I found Sam to be an incredibly relatable character to follow. As a scientist, she approaches every situation with logic and skepticism, and I appreciated how her background influenced how she approached the creepy things happening around her. I also connected with her social struggles and health anxiety, which felt very similar to some of my own experiences. All of the side characters were fun and compelling and felt as well developed as Sam, and there's a vulture companion who is great. Even the antagonist (I hesitate to say villain) was portrayed as complex and oh-so-human in a way that I think is very thoughtful and poignant.

This book is fun, relatable, and engages with the darker side of family in a way that hit me right in the heart.

My first T. Kingfisher! Now I know what I've been missing -- I've been tempted by WHAT MOVES THE DEAD and NETTLE AND BONE plenty of times, but I never managed to get them to the top of my TBR...until now! I loved A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES! What a fun gothic novel: just enough creepiness to make you shiver but with a whole bunch of heart and a very good sense of humor. I'm very rarely swayed by a 'funny' narrator, but I loved Sam.

T. Kingfisher’s latest work of horror serves up some intriguing concepts, but largely fails to take them anywhere exciting. The book focuses on Sam, who temporarily moves in with her mother after an unexpected issue with her work. Her mother lives in the house that Sam grew up in, originally belonging to her grandmother Mae. Sam comes to find her mother is acting strange and paranoid, and bizarre things start happening to her the longer she stays.

The setting is somewhat southern gothic, creating an eerie atmosphere with vultures, swarms of insects, creepy rose gardens and the legacy of the Confederacy. Later in the book, however, the tone and atmosphere take a hard turn away from anything that could be described as gothic, the ultimate climax feeling much more like heroic fantasy than suburban horror. This shift is founded in the plot and makes sense, but doesn’t entirely pay off.

The biggest issue is that while Sam is a good character with an engaging voice, and I would certainly not say the book is boring, much of the story is rather slow and repetitive. Sam frequently finds or experiences something strange, does a cursory investigation into it, and then moves on. This pattern comprises most of the book.

Don’t get me wrong - good horror can follow this formula. But typically this time would be spent exploring themes or developing characters, and I just didn’t get that from A House with Good Bones. Where there are themes, they are presented in the most cursory way - evil supernatural forces as a metaphor for whatever the author wants to say is bad, without any true exploration of meaning or nuance.

This is a short book, so I can’t fault it too much for not having strong arcs. That being said, Sam doesn’t change much at all, nor do her flat, surface level relationships with the other characters.

This all being said, I still think it’s a decent book. The setting is cool, the voice of the writing is witty and super engaging, and it finds sources of horror in places that I would love to see explored in more fiction. And there are parts that are genuinely super creepy! I just wish there was more substance to the characters and the themes.

After finishing A House with Good Bones, I am reminded yet again that I am missing out by not having read T. Kingfisher’s entire catalog. In terms of content and genre, this southern gothic mystery is worlds apart from my first experience with a Kingfisher book (Nettle & Bone), but the fabulous storytelling, fun characters, and quirky humor are present once again, and it guarantees a fun time.

The latest archeological excavation has come to a halt, so Sam decides to take her extended time off in North Carolina to hang out with mom, drink boxed wine, and re-watch her favorite crime shows. Sam is optimistic about her visit despite the arduous drive from Arizona and the fact that an ominous black vulture welcomes her back to her childhood home. Sam scoots around the predatory bird and opens the front door to find that things have changed. The wild and fun color scheme on the walls has been replaced by bland, normal beige, and there seems to be an alarming absence of insects in Gran Mae’s garden. But what’s even weirder is that her mom is wearing rose-colored glasses. Grandma’s presence in Sam’s childhood is not remembered fondly, and her family has always acknowledged this fact. But now her mom is making excuses for the difficult woman, and Sam becomes alarmed by her anxious, people-pleasing behavior. As the strangeness mounts in the home, Sam’s logical brain is put to the test as she unravels her dark and dangerous family history.

Kingfisher has this wonderful power to incorporate humor into her stories, no matter the context or genre. It was an unexpected element in this spooky tale, and it quickly became one of the parts I enjoyed the most. Sam’s inner monologue was delightful. She’s incredibly weird, and I adore her for it. As someone who studies the history of bugs, Sam’s passion for creepy crawlies is infused into her very being. Her habit of naming a bug’s classification or background on its studied behavior could have easily been annoying. However, Kingfisher works in this characterization deftly so it comes off as endearing. Her scholarly mind is also fun to experience the horror through because she is so damn logical about everything. Sam doesn’t approach the situation from an “I’m a smart person with a doctorate and therefore better than you,” but more so with a hungering curiosity to find answers and with the gusto for research to make it happen.

A House with Good Bones has a pretty good setup. The fear builds nicely as Sam contends with the strangeness of her childhood home, but it gets unruly at the end. The family mystery pushing this story forward is delivered in teeny, tiny doses. Was it enough to stay step-for-step with the story? Sure. But I am left wanting more because it feels like the mystery was wound too tightly for the majority of the book only for it to explode at the end. The what-the-fuckery escalates too quickly after spending 200+ pages collecting little morsels. You can either walk away from this book happy for the instant gratification of reading a good, short tale or have whiplash from the rapid culmination. I experienced the latter. It didn’t ruin my time with the book, but I found myself wanting more from the secretive family.

Kingfisher plays around with the idea that our homes are safe, comfortable places and how quickly that security can be taken away. I enjoyed how Kingfisher reveals little by little how a familiar, beloved place can become something unknown and feared. Sam’s small discoveries upon returning to her childhood home immediately make her uneasy. It’s interesting that something as small as a new picture on the wall or a comment from your mom can immediately put you on guard. It’s that moment when the expected fails to happen, and you instinctively feel that something is wrong. The story’s subtle scare factors are the moments that have stayed with me the most. Even though it definitely gets weird and over the top at the end, most of the story is built with these small, unnerving moments that constantly keep Sam off-kilter while she tries her best to stay grounded.

I give kudos to Kingfisher for bringing the fear factor into this short tale. It’s not a knock-your-socks-off kind of scare, but I enjoyed many moments of dread and anxiousness. This low-level creepiness played off Sam’s demeanor incredibly well. As someone who would have run from the house screaming, it was fun to be forced to stew in the strangeness with this logical woman. If you’re looking to have your hackles raised, A House with Good Bones will certainly make you uncomfortable in your own home.

Rating: A House with Good Bones - 7.5/10

4.5 Stars rounding up to 5.

Thanks @TorNightfire for my gifted e-arc. I read my first T. Kingfisher last year and have been going through her backlist since then so I was super excited to read A House with Good Bones. It's a Southern Gothic Horror book. I would also call it, "cozy horror". It hooked me right away. As always we get that great sense of humor from T. Kingfisher, but also some really creepy stuff happening in a suburban neighborhood.

I loved Sam as the main protagonish. She's a spunky archeologist and her specialty is on bugs. She goes to stay with her mom while she's in between jobs. Unfortunately right away Sam notices that there is something wrong with her mom.

The book was really fast paced and I just had no idea where or what was going to happen. Never thought I would have a book making me like a vulture!

I did like this book more than The Hollow Places and The Twisted Ones. While those books were scarier, I like the characters in this book a lot more.

Highly recommend!

This was a fun one; unique and not at all what I expected. I very much appreciated the deep mother/daughter/grandmother relationship and was spooked more than once, however I could not get behind the ending. I absolutely will recommend this to readers who enjoy fantasy and magic in their horror.

T. Kingfisher is my new go-to automatic request author! This is, by far, the best novel I've read by this author. I enjoyed this story immensely. Contemporary Southern gothic at its best!
Samantha Montgomery is an entomologist/archeologist who has time off from her latest dig. She goes back home to her idyllic North Carolina street to visit her mom for a bit. But just as her brother has warned her of something being "off" with mom, Sam starts to see other things amiss about the house itself. Plus, there always seem to be vultures watching the home.
This story has a slow build and a horror that makes you want to curl up in bed and pull the covers over you head. Thanks goodness I read this during the day!

*Special thanks to NetGalley & Macmillan Tor/Nightfire for this e-arc.

I had high hopes for A House With Good Bones - I love the haunted house trope, creepy family ties, and southern gothic vibes, but unfortunately, this novel did not work for me. I did not like the voice of the narrator/ protagonist - it made it very "cozy", and very little happened until over halfway through the novel. At that point, the narration changed, and the action started, but I was hoping for a more scary type of horror. This is a great novel for someone looking for light or cozy horror.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for an ARC in exchange for review.

I absolutely loved this book! T Kingfisher has done it again. Their horror books are so consistently amazing that they have become an auto-buy author for me.

This book has such a unique perspective on the gothic haunted (?) house narrative. It was classic and fresh all at the same time. It also had just the right amount of creepiness to keep me looking over my shoulder. This book is perfect for horror fans who aren’t too into gore, but like something that gets into your head and then isn’t afraid to surprise you. I also like that the pets/animal companions in T Kingfishers work always survive. It’s refreshing.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy of this book

T. Kingfisher is one of my faves, and I will gladly read anything she writes. A House with Good Bones is no exception. Once again, she excels at balancing humor and horror, slowly increasing the tension while lightening the mood with humor. I love her protagonists always, and Sam won my heart with her first sidebar about bugs.

Kingfisher’s writing is exactly what I like, so I’m a big fan and I have no notes. 10/10

This book is so entertaining. I loved the characters; they are fantastically written. You want to keep turning the pages to see what they are doing and how they are dealing with all of the weird things that are occurring at the house. I love how T. Kingfisher brings humor and a lightness to gothic horror. It keeps you on your toes and makes you care about the characters. I loved that Sam was an Archaeoentomologist. She studies insect remails found uncovered in archaeology site. There is a ton of discussion of bugs, but it adds a layer to the story.

I loved how Sam's family's past was so deeply hidden from her and her mom. Each chapter brings a new discovery to who they were and what that means to them. Thank you to T. Kingfisher and Tor Nightfire for having me read this chilling book.

The House with Good Bones was such a fun and creepy read! And kind of gross at times, personally?? I love haunted houses and Kingfisher’s writing and brand of humor really really worked for me here. I’m very happy to say this was another big hit from this author 😀

The thing that amused me to no end here was how rational Sam was about it all. I loved her internal monologue and how she looked for scientific explanations for everything. It was very much the opposite of what I would do and I had a lovely time reading about her trying to figure out what the heck was going on in the house.

The horror and spooky elements were also really well written and executed! I enjoyed the slow build of it and how it kept escalating as we found out more about Sam’s family. The way that tied with bugs and bones and the other twist at the end really hit me in the gross feelings and I actually grimaced through the entire final chapters lol

The ending was really good and I liked how it wrapped up the story. Phil and Gail (and Hermes!) were great supporting characters throughout and I loved their final interactions with Sam after what they went through. There were a few open questions, but I didn’t mind not having answers to them.

Funny and unsettling, T Kingfisher brings us another story doing what she does best. A House With Good Bones is packed with laugh out loud moments and eerie imagery. I also found the main character relatable in many ways given that she is a similar age and fat with curly hair, which is something we don’t see often enough. While the twist is fairly obvious from the start I think anyone that’s a fan of horror comedy will enjoy this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for a copy of this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

(4.5 stars rounded up)

A southern gothic haunted house story, imbued with religious and occult themes. Kingfisher uses the haunted house as a metaphorical representation of long-standing trauma from decades of intergenerational familial abuse and neglect. The climactic confrontation between the protagonist and the primary spiritual threat is symbolic of the emotional work that survivors do to break cycles of violence. Ghosts who still cling onto the material plane, refusing to move forward and haunting the living are a supernatural representation of the possessive nature of abuse. I was impressed by the clarity with which this theme of intergenerational trauma and the far-reaching ramifications of abuse was rendered in this book. Kingfisher somehow managed to write a story exploring such intense themes, with an immediately unsettling atmosphere to match, as well as short bursts of blood-filled violence, all with an ever-present and sparkling sense of humour.

The first person perspective works wonders for the narrative, presenting the reader with a look inside the flawed but loveable protagonist Samantha. She is an incredibly dynamic character and I was satisfied by her character arc. Her character growth is realistic, and this is helped by Kingfisher writing Samantha as a mature, reflective person. Throughout the novel, she often ruminates on her past, making connections between her personal experiences and wider sociopolitical contexts. I love reading about intelligent and ambitious women, and I love how Kingfisher interlaces Samantha’s character traits with the narrative and its driving themes. Also, it was uplifting to read a story with positive fat representation. The relationship between Samantha and her mother is another compelling aspect of the story. The way they support each other throughout the story, even at the beginning when Samantha is only just starting to suspect something is wrong with the house, is heartwarming to witness. Family dynamics are of great interest to me and this book doesn’t disappoint when it comes to intense and messy family dynamics. As Samantha does more research into her family history she uncovers major secrets about her family’s past.

The only complaint I have for this novel concerns the ending. The reveal at the end of the climactic fight is shocking and I love the transition from describing bugs and roses before each new chapter to simply stating that there is nothing. The impact was very profound at that moment. However, I found the short section afterwards to be lacking. The conflict is too big to fit into the number of pages left. As a result, the narrative is compressed and the pacing feels rushed. Ultimately it had the effect of lessening the impact of what could have been a high stakes story with a cathartic conclusion.

A+ for vultures. I loved the infusion of the everyday with the magical. I will be recommending this to customers – it has become one of my favourite horror reads and it’s a clear standout in its genre. Thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for sending me an ARC.

Thanks T. Kingfisher … I never needed to sleep again anyways. 😨

Some authors understand creepy vibes and she’s one of them. When your opening line is: “There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house,” it probably isn’t going to become LESS creepy as you read on, and let me assure you it didn’t!

Samantha Mills is a thirty-something archaeoentomologist (they study insect life at archaeological dig sites) who’s come to live with her mom, Edie, for a few months in the North Carolina home her mom inherited from Sam’s grandmother, Gran Mae.

Immediately, Sam sees changes that her mom has made to the home that aren’t in keeping with her mother’s spunky personality. The once vibrantly colorful walls have been painted a bland ecru, a prominent painting has been switched back to one Gran Mae favored when alive, and Edie is radiating anxiety whenever Sam questions any of it or says even the least negative thing about Gran Mae. Add to that Sam’s increasingly disturbing night-time episodes, weird post-it note reminders her mom has written to herself, and a startling discovery about her great-grandfather. Then there’s the VERY unique situation in Gran Mae’s rose garden.

What’s going on? Sam’s scientific mind is finding it harder and harder to come up with a logical explanation as things become more bizarre, and her latest creepy backyard discovery is about to unleash a whole lot of unintended consequences!

As with any book, there were good points and weaker points. Kingfisher really captured the Southern gothic atmosphere, created strong characters and a compelling storyline with a dabble of historical fiction thrown in to flesh out the plot, and a deliciously intense ending (aka the reason I won’t sleep again). She also excels with her trademark humor. Where it suffered a bit was the pacing. Besides the night-time happenings, the pace felt pretty leisurely until towards the end when things went into overdrive!

If you enjoy Southern gothic stories with horror lite, some paranormal and fantasy elements, crazy-cakes endings and a touch of humor throughout, this should do the trick. T. Kingfisher always comes through with a highly imaginative story!

★★★ ½ (rounded to 4)

Love the cover art, very well done and definitely draws your attention.5 stars on that.
The book did certainly have several creepy elements to it but I felt I really couldn’t get into the story as much as I wanted and something just seemed lacking in general. Everything just felt more superficial as I was being told of elements without me actually feeling really into the happenings. It was an overall ok read and I feel it’s one T Kingfisher fans would enjoy.
3.5 stars