Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not effect my rating or review.
The main thing I will say is that this novella reads really similar to T. Kingfisher’s “The Twisted Ones.” At one point I wondered if I had accidentally started re-reading it. But even though it hits some of the same elements (terrible grandmother) it has some different ones (main character is a bug doctor). The novella jumps around a lot I thought. Things didn’t really gel for me til about the 30 percent mark and then it just got really good. I did like how the novella ended, pretty much on a ominous, but [swear word] it note.
“A House With Good Bones” follows Sam Montgomery. Her recent dig gets cancelled, and she returns to her mother’s home to stay. But when she arrives home, Sam notices her mother seems different, the house looks like it did back when her grandmother was still alive, and something seems to be reaching out to Sam to make her notice them.
Sam feels a bit…I don’t know, bland at times. She honestly reminds me a lot of the main character from “The Twisted Ones” which is why I said above it was messing with me to read this book. Her being a paleo entomologists was pretty interesting. The novella comes alive when describing bugs and what they do. I think that would have been a nice break up things instead of the chapters being broken up by descriptions of roses. I get why T. Kingfisher did that, but I think the bugs would have been better. Or just combine together in some way.
The other characters are cool, the good witch, Sam’s mother, the general Southern Gothic nature of the neighborhood was awesome. Like I said, the novella gets better once Sam starts to branch out of trying to figure out whether her mother is suffering from nerves or something.
The writing is typical T. Kingfisher, horror with dashes of messed up humor and also straight out humor. The pace though was an issue. Like I said above, not until you get to the 30 percent mark does this one get cooking.
The setting was very cool and spooky.
I liked the ending and that things didn’t end in a neat way.