steve capone jr., Author/Editor

I’m late to this party, but I’m glad I’m here.

Carissa Orlando’s The September House (2023) is (still) a new take on haunted house horror. Lately, I’ve read a slew of them (six haunted house books in the last two months). In this story, we meet Margaret, a mature woman with complex familial relationships—and accompanying psychic wounds—who herself meets a host of ghosts—all of whom boast grisly wounds of their own—living in her recently acquired Victorian mansion.

The inciting incident here isn’t the appearance of the ghosts or the disappearance of Margaret’s husband Hal, but rather the impending arrival of her daughter Katherine who will undoubtedly be totally freaked out by the blood drip drip dripping down the stairs and seeping from the walls.

The main plot questions in this story are driven by Katherine’s need to find her father and Margeret’s distinct lack thereof combined with the intensifying behaviors of the multifarious denizens (“pranksters,” per Margaret) of the Vale Home.

Most impressive, considering my growing familiarity with the sub-genre and my general awareness of the tropes we all know and love in the superordinate category of Horror: Orlando’s narrative subverted my expectations—in big ways—at least three different times. I twisted this way and that, contorting in anticipation yet wondering what was coming next, what was really happening, and what I was merely imagining. Orlando’s carefully plotted release of information led me down a path that looked much much one sort of way only to remove my colored glasses and show me that everything I’d been sensing wasn’t mistaken, but that my understanding of the world where these things occurred was badly mistaken. It’s hard to overstate how surprising and pleasing this experience has been. I am already wistful that I can never again read The September House for the first time; I treasure any book triggering that lament.

Title: The September House

Author: Carissa Orlando

Publisher: Berkeley

Release: September (of course) 2023

My Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐