What a treat, such an epic and sweeping dark fantasy with beautiful and immersive illustrations. Loved it so much I couldn’t put it down. Once the world was built and the lore was woven, I was hooked. I know it was over four hundred pages but it didn’t feel long enough. Which, in my estimate, is a pretty good gauge that your story is just phenomenal. It felt like I was reading someone on par with Pan’s Labyrinth or the dark grittiness that pairs with whimsy we’d see in a Laika film. But it was very much its own singular story. I’d love to see this adapted into a beautifully illustrated anime.

"A gripping fantasy novel marked by divine rituals, intense combat, and twisted romance, House of the Beast is a tale of revenge, resilience, and the power of love to see us through the darkness."
I had all the feelings reading this book! In a desperate exchange for her dying mother's medicine, Alma reaches out to her estranged father for help. In return she must be a part of House Avera, the most frightening house. And they take her arm. Her mother dies not long after and I felt rage for Alma! This was such an amazing dark fantasy book, that I would recommend it to everyone!

A huge thank you to NetGalley & Harper Voyager for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion! That being said, let's get into this review!

I think my biggest problem was this book is that it's labeled in the Romance genre, so I was expecting a romance plot or at the very least, sub plot. That wasn't the case in this story, at least not that I found. While there were some romantic feelings between the two main characters, Alma & Aster, this wasn't romance. My other issue with this story was the pacing! At times, I felt like everything was moving too slow, even during some of the action scenes. I found myself loosing interest and my focus going in and out. I would have to go back and re-read some parts because I started skimming instead of reading, just so I could get out of the scene. Also, I don't really see how this is "gothic" or "dark academia" themed. Sure, there was a lot of black & gold buildings & decor, but that doesn't really make it "gothic". Nor is there really much of any academia. it was mentioned that she was studying, and she had one tutoring session (on page), but that's pretty much it!

Okay, now for my positives! I absolutely loved this plot. The whole "taking revenge on my dead-beat, narcissistic father by taking the title he so much wants"? Oh yeah, I'm here for it! There were a lot of parts that were very well written and even brought tears to my eyes. I loved all the characters, even the horrible family members! You know someone writes a good, horrible character when you can't even stand to read their name on the page! I related a lot to Alma and her growth throughout the second half of the book was so immaculate, I just wanted to read through the book at hug her. She went from feelings so utterly alone and afraid, to being okay with being alone, to knowing that even if she's alone, she has made life long friends along her path. Her growth was beautiful. Even though Aster had issues, I still really enjoyed him too. His story was horrible and his actions? All I can say without spoiling anything is I understand. I also really enjoyed the art throughout the book! It really helped bring a great visual to the characters & bring the story to life!

Overall, this was a really good debut fantasy novel but reader beware, there are some trigger warnings including:
- abusive relationships
- unaliving of animals
- violence & gore
- mental health issues

Summary: Girl reaches out to her estranged father to save her dying mother, but finds more than she bargained for when she’s conscripted to serve a dark god.

🗡️ Forbidden love
🗡️ Revenge
🗡️ Anime-vibe battles
🗡️ Yearning
🗡️ Morally gray
🗡️ Tragedy

Just wow. I am wowed. I’m honestly not sure how to classify this book. But I’ll say that it’s a gothic revenge novel that will rip your heart apart and give you a hug.

The characters are all perfectly fleshed out and flawed and admirable and awful, and I would die for most of them. The FMC/MMC relationship has enough yearning to put Mr. Darcy and Miss Bennet to shame. The story itself if innovative and engaging and moves along at a steady, if a bit slow, pace that approaches a frenzy in the third act as all the threads are pulled together into the wonderful and horrifying conclusion.

To top it off, Michelle Wong has abundantly peppered the book with gorgeous black and white illustrations that bring life and clarity to the text. Very Tolkien-esque.

If I had to classify this book into vibes, I’d say Sword of Kaigen meets V for Vendetta meets Final Fantasy meets The Great Gatsby. Yeah… just trust me. You need to read this.

Release date is set for August 5 and the deluxe preorder design is to die for. 🩷 Thank you to Michelle Wong and Harper Voyager for this ARC version in exchange for my honest review.

whimsical beautiful FOR THE MONSTERFUCKERS!!! what a beautiful story, perfect for villain lovers. a true dark romance and super fun, unique world. extremely satisfying fantasy in a world of cookie cutter romantasies.

What an original, unique book! This may be an absolutely insane take, but to me there are parts of this that read very much Studio Ghibli vibes, but if Studio Ghibli was way darker and way less cosy. I loved the way Alva changed over time, how her motivations shifted and her opinions changed as she got older and experienced more. I love the tension between Alva and Aster, and their weird relationship of being each other's closest friend and maybe more, but also always holding things back from each other. Also must mention how beautiful the illustrations were!

How to put this into words that are worthy of the book.

This is bloody, gothic, full of unhealthy relationships, and tastefully done. I love a good book with zero green flag characters and this delivered.

There's, 💀 trials, romantic elements, politics, and so much more.

Such a good narrative fueled with thrilling intrigue. 4 stars and I enjoyed the pace of the story as well as the characters.

<b>ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.</b>

<i>3.5 ☆</i>

A simple, chronological story of a girl and her invisible friend that I was able to devour in a day.

The story was nostalgic in a sense where everything felt pretty simple. I was able to pretty much predict where everything was going. The characters weren’t fleshed out much, like Aster- all we got from him was that he likes to kill and likes Alma. okay. But enough happened that moved the story along where I didn’t get bored. Bittersweet endings always get me somewhat.

I don’t even know where to begin!?! This book is PHENOMENAL. This is the kind of fantasy you curl up in a dark corner and just vibe your way through morally gray characters.

Not only is this a well-written fantasy with politics budding out of every corner, but while reading there is BEAUTIFUL illustrations throughout the book!!!

In the beginning, the books follows our FMC, Alma, at the early age of 11 and what brought her to where the majority of book’s time line takes place. Eight years later, an invisible to everyone but her physical manifestation of the Elder God, and plot of revenge, this is an absolutely wild ride.

This book has extremely dark moments and certain times random violence would catch me off guard. I absolutely loved it.

With high fantasy can sometimes feel rushed, but this is not something House of the Beast deals with. It’s fast-past with moments of peace and the next moment chaos has sounded. The characters were entertaining and kept me hooked. Certain characters surprised me by the ending and I love having moments like that. Everything wrapped up so well and the satisfaction felt by the ending was delicious, I will savor it for a while.

Pub Date August 5 2025

ARC provided by Avon, Harper Voyager publishing and NetGalley. Thank you.

review posted to NetGalley & Goodreads

I usually don’t read romance/romantasy books, but I’m glad I was able to get a copy of this book! (Thank you Net Galley and publisher!)
The world building and mythology mixed in some eldritch vibes with more traditional fantasy elements and I was here for it.
The characters were interesting and there were enough twists and mystery to keep me reading til the end. Combat scenes were fun to read and the gore really picks up in the second half of the book.
The romance angle was not really compelling for me- but I’m not a huge fan of romance, so take that with a grain of salt! There is no spice in this one, so it felt more YA to me.
Overall, this book was entertaining with interesting world building, light romance elements, engaging plot twists, and a satisfying ending. After such a strong debut, I’m excited to see what Wong writes next!

I had a really hard time getting into this book. I don’t read too much gothic stuff but I do enjoy dark romance as well as fantasy. So when the arm got chopped off I went with it until I saw the picture of it severed. I also was taken aback by the father and daughter relationship. However I continued to read to see if it changed. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for a gothic based fantasy book but this wasn’t the book for me. I am definitely one of the few people that feel that way so if you like gothic style and fantasy I would go for it!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

- [ ] This is an ARC Review. I want to thank Michelle Wong and Avon and Harper Voyager for allowing me the chance to read this book ahead of release day! This book was a bit out of my normal realm of reading but oh how I enjoyed it! I will say I struggled to immerse myself into the fantasy world itself however the pictures did provide some assistance! Who doesn’t want to read a little toxic love?! I have such a soft spot looking at the glimpse into Alma and her mom’s relationship. Then to see the relationship with her and her father’s in a complete contrasts. It makes all the sense why Alma wants to do everything her father has taken time to build up. Alma and her “imaginary” friend Aster have been peas in a pod majority of her life but throughout reading I just kept thinking was Aster the villain or the hero in this story. The book was less romance than anticipated and left me wanting for more of an ending

first off, this cover is GORGEOUS. this sounds amazing and if the summary is anything to go by, i have a great new fantasy book in store for me! i will be sure to share my review on GR/retailers and i can’t wait to dive in! 💫

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Voyager for the ARC! I appreciate the opportunity to read and give my honest review.

This is really 2.5 stars rounded up to 3, and that’s being generous because this is a debut.

First up: marketing this as dark adult fantasy was a mistake, imo. This is YA in tone, style, and content; edit out a few curse words and bloody details and this is upper YA all the way through (though I think I’ve read bloodier YA tbh). Adding the sort of self-discovery and coming-of-age growth we usually see in YA would have really helped this novel; as is, the characters just sort of fall flat. I also intensely disliked the default use of “man” in this, even when the MC is referring to herself, for example in idiomatic expressions.

Let’s start with what I DID like:
• While the worldbuilding was highly derivative, I enjoyed the concept of two of the divines, the Odious Tinkerer and the Dread Beast. Cool names, right? Those were fun.
• Sevelie, who was the only developed character with an arc that made sense.
• The arm sacrifice and follow-up moments of how it impacts Alma

Beyond that, this was, unfortunately, poorly written and unoriginal. Alma is not memorable. She often thinks about how selfish and terrible she is, but then feels guilty and tries to be kind to everyone — even though she was “chosen” because of her darkness and longing for revenge. The “revenge for dead mother” as a catalyst has been done to death and wasn’t even convincing here. The Umbral Plane and its monsters are just a spirit portal and dark spirits (Legend of Korra, anyone?), plus for some reason a Weeping Angel is in there (call it what you want and make excuses for its nature, but that’s a statue that can’t move when you’re looking at it and then attacks when you blink? That’s a Weeping Angel.) The prose is equally uninteresting, with cliche expressions and unnecessary fillers.

The plot itself was muddled and repetitive. Alma wants revenge on her father because he sent for the wrong kind of healer and her mother dies (which might have happened anyway). After she’s spent 8 years plotting revenge and feeling sorry for herself, she finds out more bad stuff about her father to justify taking him down, and then yet more bad stuff. Supporting characters are wishy-washy and change not just their minds but their entire personalities in order to dish out exposition and move the plot along, and still quite a few of them make decisions and alliances with no convincing motivation.

I really, really wanted to like Aster, her “monster,” but he turned out to just be a bland, watered-down version of your typical kind of annoying, kind of control-freak fantasy love interest. Also, this is not a romance in any sense of the word (sorry, monster-f**kers; like I said, this all reads very YA. It’s your first toxic relationship with some pining and “it’ll never work” and that’s it).

The ending was pretty easy to guess, which made it unsatisfying, because I kept hoping there was going to be a twist or something unexpected, but I don’t think at any point I was truly excited by what was going on or felt any kind of anticipation for what would happen next.

That said, if you like formulaic fantasy and your stereotypical inhuman love interest, you might still enjoy this. For me, it wasn’t hugely problematic or infuriating — just boring. There’s nothing in here you haven’t read or seen before.

Alma never really had anyone, but her mom. Sure, she had her imaginary friend, but that was just a hallucination brought on by loneliness. Until one day, it was all ripped away from her. As Alma's mother fell ill, Alma reaches out to her estranged father for help. Not only does Alma have a father, but a noble one at that. He bargains a deal for Alma to go back with him in Exhange for care to be provided for her terminally ill mother.

Arriving in her new home, Alma is claimed as a vessel by the Dread Beast, God of House Avera. Her new family wants nothing to do with her, even if their god chose her. Forced into Solitude once more, Alma discovers friendship from an unconventional source. Receiving grave news about her mother, Alma begins to divulge House Avera's secrets, shames and deceits. Now Alma wants nothing more than revenge for her mistreatment and to avenge her mother. Nothing and no one will stop her.

This book's powerful writing has the ability to elicit emotions from you on every page. Michelle Wong did a fantastic job of creating layered and deep characters. The cadence of her writing was perfect for this fast-paced fantasy read.

This book is listed under the "Romantasy" genre, but it is truly so much more than that. This is a book I highly recommend!

House of the Beast is so beautifully written! I loved the gothic world that Wong built, definitely a book I would recommend for all fantasy lovers!

It's frustrating when a book has this much potential and then falls short.

The writing is immersive, the main cast is boilerplate but interesting, and the writing is image-heavy in a way that calls back to anime in general and a few live actions shows in intended specific. Where the book falters is structurally. Every transition drags for pages and pages and pages--every entrance, every beginning, every ending. It isn't until the 70% point that the plot actually begins. Until this point, it's bogged down with details that show the author put great thought into world building, but then had trouble actually building the world. We get exposition via character dialogue which is unfortunate, because the dialogue is one of the weakest parts of the book. Side-characters outside of the main cast are wooden pieces that show up for the page they are put on, sometimes three in a row, to say the line the MC needs to hear, and disappear again.

The beginning, where the world is being described solely by Alma in her head, is conversely one of the best parts and it makes for a strong start. Alma's internal voice is strong; she and Aster are great. Selling a main love interest that exists functionally only in one character's head is difficult. Mostly, it works. Their ending is dramatic but I think it fell a little short for me (no spoilers) because I wasn't sure where Alma's motivations in that moment were coming from as compassion isn't really a part of her character outside of a couple pet-the-dog moments that come in the last seventy pages of the book.

We're in Alma's head, and while her voice and character are strong, she lacks a certain curiosity about things: other characters, Aster, her family, the world. As a reader, you're forced into blindness for those things and it made me wonder if this was an intended part of Alma's character or the author's blindness to the reader naturally having those questions and needing some form of an answer--even if that answer was "you don't get to know that yet." Alma's character in general is sort of conflicted: she's both exceedingly arrogant and very self-deprecating which is an odd mix that frustrates at times. It kept her a little distant from me as a reader.

On the whole, it's a unique world and story. It's clear a lot of thought went into putting the world together even if the same care wasn't put toward showing those things to the reader in a way that was always effective. The book is much longer than it needs to be and the transition points where it cuts its own tension by paradoxically trying to extend that moment of apprehension really stood out as places that needed a cleaver vs other portions (dialogue exposition) that needed a knife. I hope in the sequel it gets both.

I devoured House of the Beast in a single day—I just couldn’t put it down! Everything about it pulled me in: the characters, the storyline, the pacing. The illustrations were such a beautiful touch, adding extra depth to key scenes and making the world feel even more immersive.

I do wish we had more moments with Fion and Kaim. Fion’s confidence was so compelling, and I would have loved to see that shine more in their interactions. And Sevelie—while I adored the friendship that developed between her and Alma—I was really hoping for a more intense confrontation or moment of reckoning with Zander. She seemed to let go of that relationship a little too easily, and I would have liked to see more of her internal struggle there.

Overall, I loved this book and will absolutely be grabbing a copy the moment it’s released!

Thank you HarperCollins for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This book was amazing! The characters were engaging, the twists and turns to the plot kept you on your toes, and a build up that just kept you coming back. A fantasy world filled with gods, people who use those gods for their own ends, and a dark history that threatens to tear everything to its core. And a whisper of a distant land that could EASILY be turned into a sequal that I would gladly read. Thanks to @HarperVoyagerUS and NetGalley for letting me read this one.