Review: "The Spite House" by Johnny Compton

Quick Summary

Type: Novel, audiobook

Genre: Horror, mystery, thriller

Back Cover: "Eric Ross is on the run from a mysterious past with his two daughters in tow. Having left his wife, his house, his whole life behind in Maryland, he’s desperate for money–it’s not easy to find steady, safe work when you can’t provide references, you can’t stay in one place for long, and you’re paranoid that your past is creeping back up on you.

When he comes across the strange ad for the Masson House in Degener, Texas, Eric thinks they may have finally caught a lucky break. The Masson property, notorious for being one of the most haunted places in Texas, needs a caretaker of sorts. The owner is looking for proof of paranormal activity. All they need to do is stay in the house and keep a detailed record of everything that happens there. Provided the house’s horrors don’t drive them all mad, like the caretakers before them.

The job calls to Eric, not just because there’s a huge payout if they can make it through, but because he wants to explore the secrets of the spite house. If it is indeed haunted, maybe it’ll help him understand the uncanny power that clings to his family, driving them from town to town, making them afraid to stop running. A terrifying Gothic thriller about grief and death and the depths of a father’s love, Johnny Compton’s The Spite House is a stunning debut by a horror master in the making."

Read Time: 4 days

Rating: 3.25 stars

Review

This was not by any means a bad book. It just wasn't the kind of thriller that gave me so much anxiety I had to put it down. Getting to the meat of the story - and of the horror - took a long time, without quite the payout I was hoping for. There was at least one twist that I had figured out long before the characters, one twist that honestly didn't fully make sense to me, and one twist that I know was supposed to be unsettling but was instead just kinda...eh.

All in all, I think I was hoping for a little more from this story. Part of it might have been that I was hoping for more commentary about the issues in the outside world - like grief or a father's love, or maybe even something to do about company towns or something - part of it might have been that I saw Gothic horror set in Texas and was expecting a little more Southern Gothic than I got. That part's on me - I guess Southern Gothic is more the South of the East Coast, like Georgia, South Carolina, even as far north as Virginia - but I really went into this expecting a Southern Gothic novel, and I don't feel like I got that. Again, is it unfair to rate something based on my expectations of what it should have been? Yes, absolutely. But that doesn't change the fact that I was a little disappointed by what I got in this book.

Still, it was a decent thriller with a few good scares and a decent mystery, so it's still deserving of at least three stars, and I think people going in with the right expectations - namely, this is NOT a Southern Gothic - might enjoy this more than I did.