This is my first Rivers Solomon book, and I now absolutely understand the hype around their work. While I anticipated a "haunted house" horror story, this novel was ultimately so much more than that. Yes, there were certainly elements of horror and suspense, and a scary-AF house, and I was genuinely afraid for Ezri the entire time. But the book's strengths lie in the character development, the narrative voice, the relationships between family members, and the development and reveal of the thing that has been haunting them all along. To truly enjoy this book, I think it is best to go in knowing as little as possible, so I will leave my review at that. Thank you so much to NetGalley for my advanced copy. I'm looking forward to reading more of Solomon's writing in the future.

Nearly impossible to read. The style just didn’t work to keep my interest I guess. Maybe others think it worked well. The premise sounded interesting but I just struggled to read this.

I loved this book so much. I was expected a haunted house story but this was so much more than that. This is for those who have mommy issues and lots of trauma. I highly recommend this one.

Thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3 stars!

Lyrical. Haunting. Full of childhood trauma. Sibling love.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

there is such darkness in this book, i found it rather tough to get through solely based on the content- the deep sense of loathing, grappling with mental illness, the way trauma haunts this whole book. the mommy issues!! this does explore many complex themes and I think the end does a good job of wrapping things up in a satisfying way. others will likely enjoy this book, there's moments of powerful and hypnotic writing.

"The comfort of a particular history, no matter how horrid it might be. Its ours. A magic only we can weave."

MODEL HOME by @rivers.solomon is not your normal haunted house story so be ready to be taken through a not-so-fun-house of unexpected horrors. Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publishers @mcdbooks and @macmillan.audio for the e-ARC and audio-ARC.

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After the death of their parents, Ezri and their two sisters go back to the home they grew up in to sort out their family affairs but they are greeted with more questions and an outpouring of childhood memories and trauma. A mostly wealthy white neighborhood, the family moved in when the kids were young and their mother was desperate to be the most perfect family on the block going so far as you telling them to be slivers meaning quiet, well-behaved and barely seen or heard. Very soon after the family moved in dark, scary things started happening in the house that the siblings have all but tried to bury in their memories.

Overwhelmed by the reasons they originally moved to England with their daughter Elijah in tow, Ezri begins unpacking more than they originally bargained for.

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Bedazzlingly spooky and deeply layered with an undertone of anxiety, this dual-timeline story weaves a tense family entanglement built on suffering in silence and the dangerous facade of perfection or in this case, "black Excellence." A whole new level of exposing the family's dirty laundry is a major theme and the discussion about the siblings remembering events differently was one that really hit home as I have often found the same with my siblings - "Jarring. The different versions of events we all have."

There are so many trigger warnings here including childhood sexual and emotional trauma, deeply seeded racism, wild parental expectations and being "othered." There is a lot going on here and I would not be surprised if I pick this one up again for a reread someday as it is so compelling but I suspect I did not catch all the intricate layers. This one was definitely hard to read but well worth the effort.

This was my first Rivers Solomon book and it shan’t be my last! I loved their writing—the style, the subject matter, the character development, and on and on. I was very much invested in these characters and storylines. I do think it’s marketed too heavily toward horror and it’s honestly more mystery/lit fic. The scares are few and though my tolerance is high, I don’t know if this is going to give many people a fright. However, the cover design is incredible because of the fact that it’s marketed as horror, and for that reason I suppose I must be thankful. I would very much recommend this book to people, I just wouldn’t expect to be chilled to the bone!

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for providing an arc, and to Macmillan Audio for providing an advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
Model Home releases October 1, 2024

“This house lures in animals with a death wish.”

Model Home was such a disjointed read, and I’m unsure if that was due to the main character having a dissociative disorder, or if it was just the writing style in general.

I struggled with the inconsistencies of quotation mark placement and only choosing to use them for dialogue half of the time.
I found that the audiobook did a poor job reflecting that Ezri and Elijah moved from England to America as there were no distinct British accents.

If you’re looking for a traditional haunted house story, this isn’t it. However, if you like when a book’s horror is defined by racism and trauma (similar to The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson), with a focus on family drama told through the lens of a gender-fluid main character, then this might be for you.

Such a great take on a haunted house book. I love the way Rivers Solomon writes. It is always such a beautiful experience even when the material/topic is decidedly not. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC copy of the book!

This is a challengingly dark read. But ultimately it ends with cautious optimism. A book that flips the haunted house genre on its head. Sometimes humanity really is the worst.

Model Home feels reminiscent of Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, in that it has a similar and particular focus on the dynamics of the dysfunctional family at the heart of the story— both the family as a whole, and the members individually. The family in Model Home, however, is Black, and their experience as a Black family in a white, ‘affluent’ neighborhood plays a pivotal role in the narrative. Obviously, not an experience that I can resonate with on a personal level, but its exploration throughout the novel amounts to a narrative that is haunting and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Model Home is far more ‘standard’ fiction-forward in genre than speculative (or horror, as I might have assumed before reading this novel), unlike the two other titles I’ve read by Rivers Solomon— The Deep, and An Unkindness of Ghosts— but their authorial ‘voice’ is so distinct that it does seem like a natural extension of the narratives they typically explore.

Ezri returns to their childhood home where they and their siblings grew up as the only black family in a white suburb to find her parents dead in an apparent murder suicide. Ezri and their siblings are forced to confront their pasts and their presents to determine what really haunted that house their entire childhoods.

As with many of Solomon's reads this dealt with a lot of difficult topics including racism and child abuse. It was a good book, but a hard read. I felt that it was more of a thriller than a horror novel.

A haunted house story unlike any other. Ezri moved all the way to England to escape the house they grew up in. But now something is wrong. All three Maxwell siblings will have to return to the house that still haunts them in order to move on. But is the house really haunted--or is something else going on?

Go ahead and plaster every trigger warning imaginable on this one, because true to Rivers Solomon form, it gets dark. The exploration of trauma and sibling relationships was expertly done, and the twist at the end took me truly and horrifyingly by surprise.

Anyone should read Rivers Solomon's work if not for their writing alone. The prose, like in all their works, is simply beautiful.

I was immediately on board when I heard fae was going to publish faer own spin on the haunted house. They use this to explore themes of mental illness, trauma, complex familial relationships, racism and queerness in an outstanding way.

In the end though I don't know how to feel about the ending, I didn't expect an explanation for all that happened in the house - but knowing what I know now, I would love to reread this in the future, catch all the intricacies in this beautiful work.

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read "Model Home" before it's publication date, even though my feedback is coming after it has been released.

I am a huge Rivers Solomon fan. "Sorrowland" is one of my top 3 favorite books of all time, and I was ecstatic to learn that they were coming out with another release that dealt with the supernatural. I honestly haven't really been able to compile my thoughts completely on this novel yet and think it will take another close reading of the book in its final, published form (which I have already ordered) to fully comprehend everything that went into this narrative. I was a huge fan of the sibling dynamic in this novel and how the characters intertwined with one another and their own personal struggles, even though we were hearing the story through Ezri's narration. I am not usually a fan of vague suspense, which is what I feel like this book is truly based around, but I was hooked on it due to the compelling discussions of personal growth, trauma responses, and interpersonal relations. I did not like Ezri much as a narrator or a character, but their perspective was interesting nonetheless. I felt as if their issues with their mother were never made clear to me, and although mother-child relationships are messy, Ezri's perspective of things felt too unreliable for me to believe. Along that same vein, I felt like the last chunk of the book moved very quickly with a lot of pieces that were not fleshed out in a particularly well-done manner and therefore made them seem half-baked. Elijah's possible assault, Emmanuelle's burst to national news, and the final reveal all felt very rushed to me and therefore less surprising than they should have been. I think perhaps I missed something when reading it the first time, hence why I am being more harsh about it than I want to be, and therefore want to re-read it with a new perspective.

There were also a handful of obvious grammatical mistakes in the ARC I recieved, but I assume those have been fixed prior to publication.

Rivers Solomon’s new novel Model Home feels like a horror novel. And in many ways it is. But the horrors that it reveals hit closer to home than readers are likely to expect. As with her previous novels, Solomon uses some genre conventions to explore the experience of Black communities in America. And she does not hold back.
The central character of Model Home is Ezri, who ran away from the family home in Texas, moved to England and converted to Judaism. But the murder suicide of her parents in that family home brings her and her daughter Elijah back to Texas and Ezri’s sisters Eve and Emmanuel. The three are forced to confront the terrors of their childhood – where they were the only Black family in an otherwise all-white housing estate. But worse than that, they believed that their house was (and still is) haunted and that Ezri was in some way possessed. The truth, when they finally uncover it is much, much worse.
On their website, Solomon describes themselves as fae - “half woman, half boy, part beast” and the same could be said about her protagonist Ezri. Gender fluid, conflicted, sometimes feral, fiercely loyal to her family but at the same time combative towards them, Ezri is a somewhat unreliable guide to this world. They believe intensely in the supernatural narrative that has built up around her life but also constantly needs to question its validity. But recognises the damage that was done to her as a child and tries (not always successfully) not to pass that trauma on to their daughter.
Much like the cinematic work of Jordan Peale, Solomon effectively uses well understood tropes in Model Home to explore the Black experience in America. To reveal the hypocrisy and racism inherent in the community and the petty justifications that people make for their discriminatory behaviour. Both of these auteurs work in horror but only in so far as it reveals the true horror of modern society.

Thank you Netgalley for the e-arc of this book!
Rivers Solomon is a name I have come across but never actually explored. This book seemed just the place to start. On the surface, this is a haunted house story, so, I expected to be creeped out and even moved. Some haunted house stories have the potential to do that. However, this book was a haunted house story more about the people rather than the haunting.

Rivers Solomon has done an absolutely phenomenal job in creating a haunted house story that speaks to the horrors of racism and white gated communities. This book is scary and horrifying, but also delves into themes of trauma, family, grief, queerness, disability, and Blackness. If you are a lover of horror like me, you need to read this book ASAP!

I have loved every book that I have read by Rivers Solomon and Model Home is no exception. Solomon does such an amazing job developing complex characters with flaws and growth and complicated relationships.

While reading this book, I also started reading Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake and I feel that reading the two together deepened my appreciation for both. Sharpe writes on the structural and personal experience of living in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade. Solomon offers us a clear example of that experience, where a rich Texan suburban neighbourhood and house would rather their Black neighbours were dead than living there.

One thing I can’t stop thinking about is the frequent appearance of mouth imagery in this book. In this beginning of the novel the protagonist Ezri notes that “Land is not dirt. It is esophagus, stomach, bowels. A mid-terrace Victorian in bad repair does not fare well on top of the chomping mouth of Leviathan, nor do any of us.” We learn that they and their daughter are autistic and sensitive to food texture.

This is contrasted by the antagonist of the novel who is referred to as the woman without a face, who therefore has no mouth. I think it would be interesting to reread this book with a more careful study of this theme.

I would highly recommend this book with some important trigger warnings, including suicide, murder, child abuse, child sexual abuse and r*pe, self harm and suicide attempts.

Ezri's family is the only Black family in their gated community south of Dallas, Texas. And Ezri is probably the only genderqueer kid in the neighborhood. But that isn't why they or their two younger sisters have been estranged from their parents for decades. The Maxwell children left home because disturbing, unexplainable things happened there, perpetrated by Nightmare Mother.

When they suspect something has befallen their parents, Ezri, Eve, and Emanuelle return to their childhood home to confront their ghosts and understand what has happened to their parents. A haunted house story that explores themes of racism, family dynamics, gender identity, and the cycle of abuse, Model Home was a deeply impactful story and I think will be one of my favorite books of the year. Honestly, this book deserves to be a modern classic next to Beloved.

I love that Ezri is deeply flawed and makes missteps in nearly all of the relationships we see in the novel. They are not painted as a great queer saint, but rather as a human who is trying their best to exist in a system that is often working against them. Their sisters and daughter likewise all make various missteps throughout the novel, but they are all actions driven by grief or adolescent naivete. I appreciate that all of the choices feel human and consequences feel rational. (Yes, I am saying this about a haunted house book.)

I do not often re-read books, but after having experienced the full story and getting to know all of the characters, I found myself wanting to immediately start the book over again. I wanted to try to know them better and I was not yet ready to leave Ezri and their family.

This book contains descriptions and implied instances of abuse. Please check trigger warnings and take care of yourself while reading this book.