A House With Good Bones
Written by: T. Kingfisher
Tor Publishing Group
2023
A funny Southern gothic, A House with Good Bones is a horror that is as creepy as it is hilarious.
Kingfisher does it again with A House with Good Bones, using their gift for masterful storytelling to creep out the reader and make them laugh simultaneously.
Creepy & Funny
A House with Good Bones follows Sam, an archeological entomologist, who is sent on furlough when something is discovered at the dig and decides to spend time with her mother in their childhood home. And then strange and unusual things begin to happen.
As a “bug expert,” she first notices that there is not a single bug in the backyard full of gorgeous rose bushes, her grandmother’s prized roses. Then her sleep paralysis, her mothers’ new high regard for her dead mother, and the sudden changes in the house.
Samantha is, first and foremost, funny. Kingfisher made Sam funny, spunky, and everything. She is curvy and plus sized, and highly intelligent. I loved everything about her and the fact that she was so incredibly nerdy. Her addiction to wine with her mother and staying up late to watch murder mysteries gives her this relatable charm. She is more than a character on a page; she is a real person who is quirky and completely relatable.
Samantha’s personality and tone are the driving points of the narrative because it lightens the narrative and ups the creepy factor of the story. Why? Because there is a natural human reaction to it. When she wakes to ladybugs swarming her room, to the arrival of sleep paralysis, her reaction is unease and terror sharpened only by her need to rationalize. As a result, it comes off as realistic. Even when the number of vultures circling her home continues to grow, little hands creeping up from the ground, and jars of teeth being found, every single reaction she had was one the reader could connect to. They were eye-bugging moments.
Final Thoughts
With A House with Good Bones, Kingfisher continues to impress me with her storytelling and characterization.
A House with Good Bones - A Creepy & Funny Southern Gothic
A funny Southern gothic, A House with Good Bones is a horror that is as creepy as it is hilarious.
Cynthia Ayala
Cynthia Ayala-Bujnicki majored in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. Editor-in-chief of Cyn's Workshop, she loves to read and write while tending to her pepper plants. She currently lives in South Florida with her husband, two kids Dante and Selene and two furbabies Mr. J the Kitten who Thinks He's Batman (yes, that is his full name) and Nyx.
