Book Review: Beneath the Poet's House by Christa Carmen

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“If the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world, then the torture of her soul is the second.”

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Following her husband’s death, former novelist Saoirse White moves to Providence, Rhode Island, for a fresh start. Hoping a change of scenery will cure her writer’s block and ease her grief, she rents the historic home of Sarah Helen Whitman — a 19th-century spiritualist, essayist, poet, transcendentalist, and love interest of Edgar Allan Poe — hopeful that the peaceful setting will serve as both salve and inspiration.

Upon her arrival, Saoirse makes new friends in the form of a trio consumed by Whitman, her beliefs, and her abode. And when she forms a romantic connection with a handsome, irresistible, award-winning author soon after, she feels the tide has finally turned in her favor. Inspired for the first time in as long as she can remember, she begins to write again, to feel like herself, but as oddities amass, suspicions abound, and old traumas resurface, Saoirse realizes that not everything is as it seems, and her harrowing past may not be the only thing waiting in the shadows.

From page one, Beneath the Poet’s House spins a gripping, suspenseful, and foreboding account that’s as engaging as it is captivating. Through its melding of history, mystery, fiction, lore, and legend, the narrative constructs a mesmerizing story of séances, obsession, and specters; fear, intimidation, and abuse; entitlement, lies, and manipulation; identity, individuality, and erasure; and health, power, and autonomy. 

It’s a tense, exhilarating, terrifying, and anxiety-inducing feminist gothic surrounding storied settings, buried secrets, sinister realities, gruesome truths, doomed relationships, renowned personas, desperate hopes, disquieting red flags, and a storyline riddled with horrific moments, residual hauntings, and brash decisions underscored by toxic masculinity, crushing facts, tainted pasts, and true capabilities — a dark, electric, and all-consuming tale of women’s roles and intuition.

Thank you to Christa Carmen for sharing a physical ARC of this forthcoming work of psychological horror/suspense, currently scheduled for release on December 10th. It’s an engrossing, heart-pounding must-read for Poe fans and gothic/historical horror lovers.

🖤Amanda

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