CBR Bingo: Dun Dun – This is a creepy book with a growing sense of dread.
I’ve read a *lot* of T. Kingfisher’s work this year and loved pretty much all of them. Despite this, I’ve been a little hesitant to start with her more horror-focused novels, as it’s not a genre I generally read a lot of, or enjoy all that much. I think I’ve now ran out of her non-horror novels to read (at least until my copy of A Sorceress Comes to Call arrives), so I figured I would try A House With Good Bones.
The book is narrated by Sam, an overweight, 30-something who works as an entomologist-archaeologist (basically, she’s the bug expert on archaeologist digs). After being furloughed from her work, she decides to take the time off to pay her mother an extended visit. Sam loves her mom and has a good relationship with her, but she now lives in Sam’s (dead) grandmother’s former home. Sam, her brother, and their mom briefly lived there when Sam was a child, and she does not have fond memories of her grandmother or her time in the house. When Sam arrives, she notices her mom behaving somewhat strangely – she’s redecorated the house using styles she previously expressed hatred for, she’s leaving strange notes around, and is generally kind of on-edge. The book follows Sam over the period of a couple of weeks, while she tries to figure out what’s going on and help her mom.
Despite not being my usual genre of choice, I ended up loving this. As an overweight 30-something who works in a science field and has worries about her aging parents, Sam was a very relatable character to me. I appreciated that, while she was a skeptic, she wasn’t stupid – as soon as evidence was presented that could only have a supernatural explanation, she accepted it. I really vibe with Kingfisher’s writing, and this was no exception. This was a fairly short read, I read it in a single setting, and felt it was well paced, with a slowly-growing sense of dread.