A House with Good Bones

2.5/5⭐️ 0.5/5💀 Der Klappentext klang spannend und das Cover versprach Grusel. Die Geschichte begann auch spannend und steigerte sich bis zum Ende. Die Autorin hat auch versucht, Humor einzubauen, denn Sam spricht in einem inneren Monolog zu uns, aber das hat mich nur genervt. Ansonsten war es gut und versprach ein paar schöne Stunden mit Sam, ihrer Mama, den Nachbarn und einem Familiengeheimnis. Leider zerstörte etwas sehr Entscheidendes den "grüssel"-Faktor und von da an konnte ich die Geschichte nicht mehr ernst nehmen. Denn die "Monster" haben gemiautzt!🐱 Deshalb verwandelte mein Kopf die grüsseligen Monster in kleine Mizekätzschen.🤣 Das hat mir leider das ganze Buch kaputt gemacht, abgesehen davon, dass die ganze Auflösung des Geheimnisses ziemlich schnell ging und vieles ungeklärt blieb. Wenn ihr das Buch gelesen habt, verratet mir doch bitte, wie ihr das Ende mit den miauenden Monstern gefunden habt oder ob ich da was falsch verstanden habe. Ich hoffe es sehr👀 Aber ich kann es leider nicht wirklich empfehlen. Es gibt wirklich bessere Horror-Bücher. In dem Sinne "Miau"🐱🤣

In "A House with Good Bones", Sam, an archaeological entomologist, temporarily moves back in with her mother, who lives in Sam's grandma's old home. Coming back, Sam discovers that her mom, who gave the house her own touch after Sam's grandma died, has reverted the house back to the state it was in when her grandma was still alive. The colorful walls were repainted different shades of white, the art her mom loved was replaced by a horrible racist painting that she had taken down as soon as she made the house her own, only for it to be back on display now. All of her mother's decor had been replaced by things her grandmother, who was obsessed with being "nice and normal" would have liked (and her mother would have detested, usually). As this is so out of character for her mother, Sam knows something is wrong. She considers many options: signs of dementia or other illnesses, that her mother could be blackmailed by some kind of white supremacist organisation, a late onset of grief over her own mother. As a scientist, she finds it hard to believe the reason could be something more supernatural, even as weird things keep happening and it becomes very hard not to believe in magic. I much enjoyed the focus on the relationship between these three generations of women in this family, Sam, her mother, and her grandmother, all three who have lived in that house, for a while even all three at the same time. Family secrets and previous generations haunting the present both physically and figuratively are a typical plot, and I enjoyed the execution in this book tremendously. I came to this book expecting fantasy, and honestly, up until the moment I opened storygraph to review this book, I didn't even consider that it might be considered horror. I did think it had a gothic vibe, so that might be on me not thinking it through, but I was mostly thinking it to be magical realism (which I am also not quite so sure about in its categorisation). Hence, I would also recommend this book to Fantasy readers who like a little haunting, a slightly darker touch to fantasy, and fantasy that stays close to our real world.