The House that Horror Built by Christina Henry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Harry has had a difficult life and the last thing she wants is for her son, Gabe, to have to experience such hardships. When she loses her job as a waitress during the Covid lockdown, she takes a job as a cleaner to reclusive director Javier Castillo. As she cleans his movie props and memorabilia, she never tells him that she is a huge fan of his horror films, for fear of losing her job. Even when one of those props demonstrates that it mightn’t be the biggest fan of her.
The House That Horror Built was such a joy to read. As a fan of horror film (who is trying to catch up on some of the classics), gothic mansions, compelling characters, and ghost stories, I feel like I was the target audience for this novel. It wasn’t perfect, but gosh it was close.
This novel felt a lot like a love letter to the author’s beloved genre. Horror, of course. There were so many references and allusions to some classic horror, and some more modern horror as well, of course. An example of this is the character Daniel Jensen. He is an unusually tall actor that works with Castillo to play movie monsters with heavy prosthetics and make up. I mean, he even has the same initials as real world Doug Jones.
Bright Horses was a nice setting for this book. A mansion built in Chicago not long after the Chicago Fires? Yes please. Some rooms are visited more frequently than others, such as the Blue Room. This is where some of Javier’s larger props live. Costumes and the like. I was especially fond of the Small Library, a room filled haphazardly with paperbacks and comfy chairs.
And as with many other gothic(ish) mansions, this one seems to come with a haunt of some kind. Harry notices strange occurrences as she’s cleaning. Weird knocking sounds, whispers, movement out of the corner of her eyes. Classic ghostly stuff. And because Harry is a fan of horror, we get to see her trying to apply horror movie rules to what she’s experiencing, which is a level of meta that I always enjoy.
If you’ve read my reviews before, then you knew this was coming. The characters, their complexity, their flaws, etcetera, etcetera. I was quite fond of the characters in this tale. Of course, we have Harry, a struggling single mother. She is the POV character for the majority of The House That Horror Built, so we get to know her beliefs, anxieties, personality quite well. Honestly, mostly anxieties. She is rightfully a very anxious character, and her previous experience tinges everything she does now. So much so that her son is concerned for her.
Speaking of Gabe, he was a sweet kid. A fourteen year old boy could be forgiven for being a little self absorbed, distracted, distant from his parents. For the most part though, Gabe was none of these things. He had his teen outbursts of course, but was a genuinely nice and caring person. One of my favourite things about the book was the relationship that Harry and Gabe share.
Javier Castillo was another character we saw a POV of, here and there. He was an old school creative genius type, so a certain arrogance seemed to seep in to much of his behaviour. He was haunted by his past, and the reporters who wouldn’t let him be.
If you’ve read any Christina Henry, then you know she has a unique way of pacing her stories. They hit the beats, but sometimes at a much slower, or more unexpected pace than other authors. So, if slow paced horror isn’t your thing, you mightn’t like this. In fact, many of the one star reviews cite pacing issues.
I did also find myself getting a little bit frustrated with Harry. I understand she’s a busy woman, trying to keep herself and her son afloat, but she would occasionally ignore things that I feel would have been better addressed in the moment. She was also extremely reluctant to rely on others for help, which I’m not sure is entirely congruent with what she’s been through and how much she wants for Gabe. She also tended to think the absolute worst of people, which makes sense given everything, but it was also sometimes a bit much. But what would a person be without flaws?
If you love horror, film, ghost stories, and a bit of meta fiction, alongside Christina Henry’s particular style, then I would suggest that you read The House That Horror Built. Of the books I’ve read by her thus far, this one was my favourite, and I’m looking forward to what she has in store for us in the future.
View all my reviews
The Fanciful Reader 