Book Review: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

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“All right. I had seen a very strange thing. I had to think about this logically.

“The most logical explanation, of course, was that I was hallucinating. The world continued to be the ordinary world, and the strangeness was all happening in the pink meat behind my eyeballs.”

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A House with Good Bones follows protagonist Sam Montgomery as she returns to her childhood North Carolina home — formerly her deceased grandmother’s home — where her mother now lives alone. An expert in the creepy crawly, archaeoentomologist (insect expert) Sam is on a break from her recent archaeological dig. Anxious to enjoy some rare quality time with her mother, she quickly finds that the house and her mother have changed, and not for the better.

Vultures circle the garden and sit sentient outside the house, which has been redecorated and repainted in shades of sterile white, and Sam’s mother is thin, nervous, jumpy, and afraid, as though someone or something is watching and listening. After Sam finds a jar filled with teeth buried in the backyard beneath her grandmother’s prized rose bushes, unwelcome childhood memories resurface, and she begins digging into her family history to unearth the truth behind the strange happenings. She’ll soon learn that some secrets are buried for a reason, and best left that way.

Kingfisher’s writing is seamless, employing humor that balances the creepiness and keeps the reader turning pages, desperately wanting to figure out what’s happening and what strange secrets Sam’s mother, the house, and her family history are hiding. A dark, twisted, haunting, thrilling, and propulsive slice of Southern gothic, A House with Good Bones is a fun and bizarre ride from start to finish.

❤Amanda

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