A short novella that will give you the chills. Gothic, atmospheric and deeply creepy, the titular Hawthorne House is an orphanage where three girls play a cruel game pretending to be part of a Royal Court. The action starts in 1926. Rosalyn is usually at the losing end of a complicated relationship with two other little girls, Sophie and Marie. When two sisters arrive at the House, something catastrophic happens. There are so many unsettling details, small, unimportant things that add to the unease. The casual cruelties the girls inflict on each other are unbearable. Being a novella, it’s remarkable how the author makes the characters real in such a short story. The little noises, the dark corners, the disturbing treasures that the girls keep from each other… This is a fast read that gave me goosebumps. Excellent!
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#Brigids Gate Press, LLC!

At the beginning of the novella i was slightly bored as not much was happening, but later on close to the halfway mark it got really interesting. This was a quick read, perfect for when you want to be slightly spooked without having to commit to a full novel

Thank you to NetGalley and Brigids Gate Press LLC for this opportunity to read, rate and review this arc which is available is now!

Set in 1926 in an orphanage this book is about a group of girls who create a game revolving around a Royal court. This game quickly devolves into bullying, one up man ship and cruelty. Rosalyn will do anything she can to take the crown and rule the court.

This was a hard read but I liked it. Girls can be absolutely ruthless when they want something and the writer did not shy from that fact.

Very quick read! The story was broken in to 2 parts, the before and the after which I was confused about at first. Once I started reading the second part, the first part started to make more sense.

The writing confused me a bit because I was unsure which girl had certain things happen to them because there was so many characters interacting at once. I’d have to go back and read certain parts, but then others repeated the same name at the beginning of every sentence.

The second part hooked me with the introduction of a new main character who was trying to understand what happened before.

Nice, quick horror/thriller about a group of girls in an orphanage and the evil games they would play.

Thank you Brigid Gate Press, LLC, NetGalley and Hadassah Shiradski for giving me this entertaining book to read and review!

As I began reading, I was tempted to DNF this book, but I think pushing through was better. The farther in, the more horrific and gruesome it was. But the ending seemed a bit under developed, and ended at an awkward place. I would have loved for the book to be longer, as the characters were interesting, and I think the story needed to be longer to have more depth. I also thought the writing style was trying to be sophisticated, but then some sentences would go against that. It was awkward at some parts, and I think more editing should have been done. Overall, it was a quick read, and it wad good, but not my favourite.

Creepy kids playing creepy games that go way too far. It's got a nice blend of gothic and dark academia going on, and WHAT HAPPENED AT HAWTHORNE HOUSE quickly escalates into something horrific. It is split into two parts, and the first part is more historical information and the second part is where more of the horror manifests (for me). Pranks awry, gore and violence, alllll the bugs... this is definitely not your average boarding school/orphanage horror story. The way these kids treat each other... wow! And for what reason?! I still don't full know.

I loved the vibes of this book and I think it was very creative. It is something kids do to create a hierarchy but this added a twist and made it scary. Also, kids can just be scary. All around a good read!

Rosalind and a few other kids at her orphanage play a game where they play pretend to be a part of royal court, where one of the girls gets to be Queen. It doesn’t take long before this game gets sinister, and even deadly.

I’m a big fan av short story horror, and often prefer it to full length novels, so I was very excited to read this novel. Despite this I was initially a little bored in the first part of the story, but once I really got into it, I just flew through the pages wanting to see what happened next.
The atmosphere is superb and eerie. The story itself is highly entertaining, and while the story is fairly short, it did not feel like it was rushed or missing anything.

I really like the way the story was written and would love to read more from this author in the future.

This novella is perfect if you’re looking for something short and creepy, I highly recommend giving it a shot!

Big thanks to Netgalley, Brigids Gate Press, and the author Hadassah Shiradski for allowing me to read an E-ARC of this novella.

Unfortunately, I DNF'd this at 30%. I know that it's a short story so you lose a little bit of the intro that you get in a lot of other full length stories, but I was completely confused from the beginning and never really understood what was happening. The story just didn't grab me because of this, so I decided to DNF.

(I received this book from the editor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)
What Happened at Hawthorne House, by Hadassah Shiradski, is an eerie story, shorter than 100 pages, in which a group of little girls play an innocuous game that eventually turns ugly.
It was a pretty reading, even if sometimes I had some trouble discerning what was happening to whom. The first main characters (protagonists? Antagonists?) felt quite interchangeable, as if Some felt more fleshed out than others.
Apart from that, some of the chapters felt longer than what they really were, simply because the girls were accusing each other without nothing really happening. Anyhow, I generally enjoyed the atmosphere.

And then, from the middle of the story onwards, I suddenly felt like everything found its place. I particularly enjoyed the information, the dossiers. The Ambassador’s job was very interesting and their investigations both intelligent and fascinating. I really hope we could have stayed ‘here’ more.

This book started out kinda rough, and I was tempted to DNF it while reading the first chapter because that chapter alone was so long, but after I got through the first chapter, it got much more exciting and became a quicker read. I really enjoyed the setting, the plot, and the characters. This book reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, given the girls and their relationships, and a few other things that I won’t mention so I don’t risk spoiling either book. This was the perfect spooky read to prepare me to start reading all my fall books, and I’d recommend it.

I know the first chapter is long, and seems to drag on forever, but I promise, the read is worth it.

3.5⭐️ rating overall

This novella is a creepy little gothic story about girls at an orphanage and a most terrifying "game" they play.

They are labeled as Queen, princesses, or duchesses based on the cruel and increasingly disturbing acts they commit upon each other. A power play involving pain, embarrassment, and sometimes physical injury moves them up in the "ranks" with the ultimate goal to become queen.

This game is very real to them and they go to great lengths to prove their superiority over the others. It's quite disturbing at times as these young girls definitely have some sociopathic tendencies.

After losing their lives in a fire (a prank gone horribly wrong), they continue to reside at this husk of a building, continuing their cruel game as spirits. When a man decides to rebuild the home, he must figure out and play by their rules. If not, these spirits can cause physical pain and even death to the living.

While it's not the most frightening book ever, I enjoyed seeing how these girls play this game. Their lack of compassion for each other and the lengths they go to in order to prevail sent a shiver up my spine. These are not "sugar and spice" girls by any means.

There was something missing at the end that I can't quite put my finger on. Once I finished I felt as if there should have been more. It ended on a neutral tone, neither adding to the hauntings nor taking anything away. It just kind of...ended.

Other than that, I thought it was a creepy, disturbing novella and I would recommend it to others.

An uneven read. No scares. It was either too long or too short. What's the opposite of a goldilocks zone for literature?

This definitely had some odd, eerie elements to it that I absolutely loved. But some of it felt a bit wooden and not as fleshed out as I would have liked. I think this could have benefited from more editing.

Set in 1926 a girls orphanage where they are neglected and abused by their caregiver and the other girls. What could go wrong right? Just an innocent imaginary game The Clover Court played to entertain them between chores, lies and abuse. How these girls treated each other and what happened to them I’m still shook! This was a fast pace novella that was read in one sitting.

Thanks NetGalley, Brigids Gate Press and Hadassah Shiradski for a copy of this book.

Utterly shocked!

What Happened at Hawthorne House is a gothic horror novella about a group of young girls living in an orphanage in 1926. Rosalyn and her friends make up a game called the Clover Court, and each girl has their role to play, the Queen, a Princess, or a Duchess. The game is one of one-uppance of beating each other in pranks, really mean pranks. The girl who plays the most pranks ultimately gets to be the Queen of the Clover Court. Rosalyn takes it a bit too far and changes them all forever.

This story really took me by surprise. I was innocently reading along, liking where the story was taking me and then all of a sudden, a fire was lit. I was so stunned, especially for the twist to happen so early in the book. It was magnificent! The characters were great, and I liked that each girl had their own quirk. The author’s introduction of Andrew, the next caretaker of Hawthorne House, was very well done. I absolutely locked into this story as soon as I read the prologue. Highly recommend for readers who love horror and thrillers.

“Dead Moths. Dead Butterflies. Dead spiders.”

A nine-year old girl named Rosalyn lives at an orphanage with a group of other girls her age. Who finds themselves bored. Rosalyn invents a game, that quickly took a turn for the worst…

Gothic-Horror Novella set in 1926

My Thoughts

Trigger Warnings:
Gore
Violence
Pranks gone to far
Bullying
Boredom
Horror
Lots of insects

Books Content Warnings:
Intense bullying
Child abuse and endangerment
Child harm
Detailed depictions of child death
Abuse (physical and psychological)
Neglect
Death

Part one:

Kids can be mean and cruel and this book demonstrates that in a horrific manner. These kids took a game too far and paid the price.

Instead of creating a beautiful court of royals they built it on pranks and having to outdo the higher up to become queen. The pranks and games became worse and worse…. I felt bad for the new girls and all the girls that participated in something like this. Girls can be mean.

I think this book is very dark and creepy.

Honestly it’s quite morbid, but not a bad read.

Part two:

I love the rebuild of the home and how the game continued even in the afterlife of the girls.

I feel the new Ambassador knew what he was doing when it came to the house and how to interact with the girls.

I also like how visitors were able to come and see ‘spirits’ and how the Ambassador wrote down all his sightings and interactions, like a researcher would.

I feel the second part went by fast and wanted more. Maybe have the girls find peace and make their way, and Hawthorne house becoming a normal house once again.

Overall it was a great read. Thank you NetGalley and Bridge Gates Press for allowing me to be an ARC reader.

Thank you so much to Brigids Gate Press and Netgalley for the ebook to read and review.

Three orphaned girls came up with a game to prove who is the best, who can outrank the other and be queen of The Clover Court. But things take a sinister turn in the game. Thirteen years later Andrew has bought the ruins of the house to rebuild it for an evacuee house and as a tour house to view the spirits of the girls still living there.

Wow these girls were just malicious with each other and for literally no reason at all, always attacking or bullying or blaming the other for something. There wasn’t any explanation for why they hated each other so much either. They just created the rules where they had to outdo the other and cause the most pain so they could rein as queen. Though I didn’t like the way they treated each other it made a lot more sense in the second half of the story as they were lingering spirits and helped make some entertaining scenes.

The story is told into two parts, the first part is back story which I do appreciate, though it felt so dragged out, it also had nothing haunting or ghostly in that whole half at all. I wasn’t a particular fan of how that side of the story was written. I found myself struggling to understand the point to it for the most part, it could have been written better or even shortened so the second half could have had more story. The second half is of Andrew who is there to rebuild the Hawthorne House, who studies the girls spirits, sees their interactions and is an ambassador between them and the outside world. This i enjoyed a lot more seeing the girls as ghost, they were written so much better and it was interesting seeing how they interacted with him and each other.

For a horror book, it didn’t have any horror in the first half at all, I kept expecting something but nothing came, it was all just back story. This was a ghost story and only in half the book, it wasn’t really exciting which is a shame as the storyline sounded incredible and had so much potential to be a really incredibly eerie ghost haunting story.

I did like the second half more and think it may have all worked better from the perspective of them being dead and finding out the story after, rather than the long tale of what was happening at the start. I loved the epilogue sharing all the information on the girls and The Clover Court and how to treat them when visiting that would have been a great starting point honestly, to actually start gripping you into a creepier ghost story.

There was a lot that was good within the story, but I think it would have worked better being creepier, told in a different way and actually seeing more of the girls horrors as an after it happened situation. Some really good ideas and the concept of the orphan girls playing a dangerous make believe, out doing each other game that became real to them, that never left them even during death was very interesting and it could have been written so much better than it was.

In the end I was left wanting a lot more out of this story, of the ghosts, of the hauntings, of what it continued to be like, of them playing the game with random people that arrived, of the events that transpired and changing hands of queen. I really loved the storyline concept so much and I’m so sad that it wasn’t the haunting ghostly horror story I was expecting it to be.

A short little ghost story about a children’s game gone too far. Children are a staple in horror, and it still works, very creepy. This was a very short book/novella, but the story was interesting, and I could tell that the author had a clear vision about the world and the setting. That shined through.

Wow! WHAT HAPPENED AT HAWTHORNE HOUSE just stunned me, rendered me speechless; and I 'm still pondering. This was my first encounter with author of the short-form Gothic, Hadassah Shiradski; surely it will not be the last. Now I've read some Weird Boarding School/Orphanage riffs [most recently Philip Fracassi's newest, BOYS IN THE VALLEY]; but Ms. Shiradski has managed a particular historical English Gothic rendering quite exquisitely. This is a take-no-prisoners variation which settles into one's imagination, burrows in. I recommend, do read the content warnings before commencing. Matron is awful, but the girls! Way worse! And of course, there's not going to be sweetness and light and an afternoon stroll in an English garden! This is Horror Gothic! And persistence beyond the veil! So beware!