I'm sure there are readers who will love this strange and unsettling story and unique take on the haunted house but it unfortunately just wasn't my cup of tea.

2.5 - The writing style was a big struggle for me - I had a hard time understanding what was actually happening vs what was a metaphor, and it distracted me from the plot significantly. The plot is what kept me engaged and curious to continue reading, but I feel like I didn't understand what was really going on until the 70% mark. I would have liked a lot more clarity and directness in the prose due to the complex themes and storyline. I did enjoy the sibling dynamics in the novel. The writing style was just a bit too confusing for me, but I enjoyed the solid plot.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was, creepy, heartbreaking, and beautiful.
This does not read like my normal horror, the writing was more flowery if that makes sense.

My heart broke for the siblings, having to come back after all that time. After you escaped, and to come back under such dark terms..

Pick this up to feel something..

I was really excited for this one; however, it just did not hold my interest. Prose was beautiful but I felt like the story was just try to accomplish too much. Thank you to NetGalley for a chance to read and review this book.

The three Maxwell sibling have been staying away from the house they grew up in for years. Something unexplainable took place there. Is the house itself evil? Now they are forced to come back and face their past.
I found parts of the story interesting, but overall it didn’t quiet work for me. It was not a book I was eager to get back to.

This book took me by surprise. I wasn't sure what to expect when reading the premise but I was pleasantly surprised with the direction Solomon decided to go. I enjoyed reading the family dynamics, the gender and sexuality explorations, and the exploration of trauma and it's consequences.

This is a very interesting and unique novel, but mainly I had a problem with the writing style. The prose is very flowery which made for a frustrating read. The overall story is what saved this book from being a DNF. The story has this cool southern gothic feel to it. This is not a traditional haunted house story, but I enjoyed the family's dynamic. This family is very dysfunctional and chaotic which added to the excitement factor for me. Good book, but I wish the writing wasn't so flowery and overwrought.

Lately, most of what I read is good, but just not hitting that five star feel. Over and over its like, this is a good book, but there is something missing... this book comes out of nowhere and releases me from my literary edging.

Gripping from the start, Solomon truly paints this morbid picture of a beautiful house, housing a beautiful black family, but there is rot inside. Growing up with sisters, Eve and Emanuelle inside of that house, Ezri knows of its horrors. Inside a gated community, the Maxwells were the only black family. After the trial of growing up in that house, each of the Maxwell siblings moved away as soon as they could. Their parents stayed... in that house... in that neighborhood...

Now, Ezri, Eve, and Emanuelle must go back to 677 Acacia Drive. Their parents have died, and the manner in which, is haunting. The remaining Maxwells have to lay their parents to rest and come to terms with everything they endured in the house.

This was so brutal. I needed a book to make me FEEL something and Solomon has delivered. This cut as deep as I was hoping it would, touching on some really intense topics. This was such a devastating and horrifying take on the haunted house trope and I thought it was done masterfully.

Wow, what a journey this book was.
Model Home was a beautifully written novel with interesting characters, dynamics, and plot twists.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the poetic mechanisms used especially in the beginning of the book, but I was able to tolerate it. The chapter lengths were perfect for me and always kept me wondering what was going to happen next.

The book wasn't scary to me per se, I was more so disturbed by the main character's personality and their inner thoughts. However, it made more sense to me towards the end of the book.

The ending ruined it for me, to be honest. I think it was a bold choice that will definitely be thought-provoking for many. However, for me, I have no interest in immersing much more into that kind of trauma. I have too much experience of that in my personal life. This is also why I will not be leaving a more detailed review.

Overall, it was an interesting tale of familial grief and trauma, I wouldn't classify it as horror, but more-so a soft thriller with psychological manifestations.

Creepy, eerie, heart-wrenching, bleak, dark, and extremely thought-provoking! These are the first adjectives that come to mind after finishing the final page of the book and exhaling after holding my breath for so long. The last chapters are definitely a punch to the face, and the situations the characters go through are almost impossible to digest.

The story revolves around Ezri (they/them pronouns) and sisters Eve and Emmanuelle, the Maxwell siblings, who have grown estranged from their parents. They lived in a lily-white, gated enclave in Dallas, running away from a tragic childhood that affected them in different ways.

Ezri, raising their fourteen-year-old daughter Elijah alone, suffers from depression, haunted by ghosts from the past that won’t let them live in peace. Meanwhile, their disciplined, controlled, high-achiever sister Eve is raising her twins alone in Texas, and their youngest sister Emmanuelle is shining as a rising star on social media.

The unexplainable events from their childhood home left both invisible and physically painful scars. They thought the house was haunted, but no one believed them when they tried to speak up. As the only Black family in a wealthy, white, privileged neighborhood, they always felt like outsiders.

Now, as they approach middle age, the siblings are forced to return to their nightmare home after their parents die under suspicious circumstances, presumed to be a suicide pact. But why did they take their lives when there were no signs of mental health issues or any other concrete reason—besides the house itself?

The Maxwell siblings must confront decades-long secrets buried within the house. Were they haunted by something supernatural that damaged their psychological well-being, or was it something more sinister, like monsters in human clothing?

Ezri has been dealing with guilt for years, struggling with their gender identity, being on the spectrum, and expressing their emotions through art. But they also wonder if something is wrong with them. Have they been carrying the ghosts of the house as vessels, harming their own family? Was the faceless lady just a figment of their imagination, or was she real and responsible for harming their sisters? Most importantly, who killed their parents? Could Ezri have had something to do with their deaths? Is that why they keep their daughter at a distance, afraid of what they’re capable of?

Overall, this is a dark, bleak, and highly thought-provoking thriller, intertwined with a dysfunctional family drama that touches on triggering subjects like rape, emotional and physical abuse, and mental health issues. It’s a story that may divide readers into two camps—those who love it and those who don’t. I’m definitely in the camp of likers! I found this intense, emotionally exhausting, and smartly twisted story about siblings deeply gripping. It’s one of the most attention-grabbing books of the year, and I highly recommend you don’t miss it!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sharing this mind-blowing digital review copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Described as a new kind of haunted house story, this book promised a spooky tale but delivered something different.

I don't read a lot of horror, with the exception of Stephen King, because I don't really like it! I like a spooky, creepy story but I also want a good plot and strong characters, which can be hard to find in genre fiction. In Model Home I found the opposite, the story (disappointingly, for me) skewed to family dynamics rather than having a real focus on the haunted house. I think the balance was intended but not fully achieved - I keep thinking: but let's get to the house! Tell me scary stuff!

This book is hyper-representative and inclusive to a point where I thought I knew a lot about the characters, without actually knowing the characters. I became convinced that diabetes would become significant to the plot somehow.

If you're looking for strong representation of Black families and identities, this book is for you. However, it's not the horror story I expected to read.

Thanks, NetGalley and FSG for the chance to read this.

***Caution Spoilers Follow***

"A family hurts. It does. We are born in its noose."

"Many unalive things move the world. Fire. Sickness. Is that how you see the inside of yourself? As fire? As sickness? In a way. Like, the ghosts, they’re these wild, harmful things that can’t be controlled."

4.5 stars: This is one that will stick with me. The only reason I'm not giving this 5 stars is because I can't see myself ever wanting to reread it. Family dramas aren't my thing but I do enjoy books that make me feel. The writing is exceptional, including characters with depth and an original perspective on mental illness (maybe). Solomon brings you right into the head of their main characters. Their pain, inner turmoil and attempted healing are on full display. The prose is unusual, intelligent and poetic. It reminds me of Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus, with its darkly depressing push/pull or Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts with the ambiguity. I love the way in which Solomon weaves a story that feels so personal and identifiable. Ezri's voice as a gender fluid, person of color is so strong and tragic. I felt every word of this book, magnificent masterpiece that it is. What a powerful ending.

TWs: pet deaths, child abuse, there is a racist debasing, though consensual, on page sex scene that may be disturbing to some. The reader can easily skip that part and still get the idea of what was happening.

"When we speak of a house that is haunted, all we are speaking of is a house that is violent, and many houses are violent. Mold-besmirched. Leaded water. Holes in the floor. Windows that let in cold. Heating that doesn’t work. Shitty cladding. In its end, Grenfell Tower was a haunted house. Every house in Flint, in so many cities, is a haunted house. So, 677 [Acacia Drive] was a shelter, a space , and everything so awful about it was not so different than many other houses."

An ambitious and innovative take on the haunted house tale that will have you asking yourself the question, "are these ghosts white supremacists or just assholes?" As breezy as that sentence was, this novel is not that. Horror fans could read it at a surface level and be engaged, but malevolence in a living space is small aside the capital T traumas that Ezri, a sympathetic but self-admittedly unreliable narrator, has had no choice but to endure. Not a light book, not an easy book to read, but a worthwhile one.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This was a really quite bizarre story. I found myself enjoying the writing style whilst also hating parts of it, and it was an uncomfortable and confusing presentation, but in the House of Leaves kind of way and not in the ‘I hate this’ kind of way.

I think more than anything this book is the horror of trauma. The things that we don’t see, or refuse to see, or refuse to admit to ourselves are the things that creep up on us in the middle of the night when things are quiet and thoughts are loud. This book encapsulates that exact feeling, and it’s so uncomfortable, which I took as the sign of a good horror book.

I think the question and the mystery of this one too could have been more overt, but I also acknowledge that it is meant to be cloudy. Hearing from the other two siblings that weren’t Ezri would have been great, but with that said, I appreciate the book is from that flawed perspective for a reason.

Without giving too much away, I feel this book is a brilliant piece of work with a lot to say- and deep unease touted over direct scares.

3.5 Stars

I really liked this book, it was very intelligently written and I so appreciate the LGBTQ representation as I am an ally. The writing was lovely but not wordy and it was a very unique take on the Haunted House trope. This one is not for the faint of heart as there are a lot of triggers here but I’m not going to go into them so I don’t go into spoilers territory. There are so many social issues in this story abuse, racism and classism to name but a few. The bond of the siblings, especially towards the end, really made this book about family and ultimately that’s what the book is about. Mental illness and suicide issues were written realistically and respectfully, I liked how the author did that.

I loved the ending, it was haunting but not in the way you might think. I admit that the book isn’t for everyone but I loved the writing style, characters and ending very much. What or who is the real monster in this house? It’s literary fiction at its finest, I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

Rivers Solomon does it again!
Model Home is a deeply unsettling and twisted tale about generational trauma, violence, racism, gentrification, and the way it shapes an individual.

Ezri's mother Eudora has dreams of building the perfect home with the perfect family and will stop at nothing to get it. Finally, it seems she has reached the top when their family moves into 677, a large model home in a gated white community in Dallas. Soon after, strange things begin to happen.

Years later, now grown, Ezri is called back to 677 when tragedy strikes again. They, along with their sisters, are finally forced to confront the traumas they've endured, and the secrets that lie within the walls of their family home.

Rivers is a master at crafting gory, horrific, tales with one of a kind characters that are as interesting as they are flawed. I deeply love the characters Rivers creates and the representation they take on. This author does not shy away from the uncomfortable realities that is the human experience.

Model Home is creepy, dark, and unforgiving , with passages that will turn your stomach and leave you wondering what you've just read. The ending was one I did not see coming and truly left me haunted.

If there is one thing I can say with absolute certainty, it’s that Rivers Solomon can WRITE. They drop some absolutely stunning passages and insights. But they don’t write light novels, and that holds true here.

The symbolism and metaphor of the house, the reveal of what is actually going on, gender, race, the pain of relationships (family, parenthood) in the face of childhood trauma, were all handled head on and without flinching. I found this very compelling, especially in the 2nd half. This is very much literary horror and not typical genre fiction. If you’ve never read from this author I don’t think this would be where I recommend starting, but for fans this should be a win.

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

4 stars

I fangirl so hard when it comes to Rivers Solomon, and their work is on the no-brainer, will-read-immediately list for me at all times. Prospective readers who are also familiar with Solomon's work and style - and who know what they are getting into - are likely to love this. Others may find this shockingly dark (even for the genre).

Three siblings need to know why their parents aren't answering their calls, and this sends them all back to their childhood home for answers. There is so much sinister activity and uncertainty throughout, and the state of not being clear on what is or MAY be happening is extraordinarily unsettling here. What's worse than the unknown? The horrible known sicknesses embedded within society. Solomon shines a crisp light on many of these and will not let their characters or readers have a moment's peace from any of them. And why should they? This relentlessness is certainly a part of reality, especially for some of us.

There are many motifs, scenes, and references that sensitive readers may find to be too much, and the profusion of trauma will leave some readers accessing their own instead of living vicariously. Those looking for an immersive horror experience will find it here, and readers who can manage the content will find another creative, unflinching, and biting effort from Solomon.

A new spin on the classic haunted house story. Dark and magical with elements of horror, both real life and fantasy-themed. Amazing

Like all River Solomon books, this isn’t your typical spooky story, there's more to it. This was definitely full of creepy moments and feelings, but was not in any way a standard haunted house. The twist was unexpected but not in a rug pull type of way. Worth a read and will make you think about a lot of deeper themes, racism, trauma, and gender dysphoria included. I loved the writing style and there’s just so many deep quotable moments sprinkled throughout. I would say it’s a little more literary fiction leaning that true horror, but it was a very unsettling read overall.