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Book Summary and Reviews of The September House by Carissa Orlando

The September House by Carissa Orlando

The September House

by Carissa Orlando

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (25):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2023, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn't believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.

Margaret is not most people.

Margaret is staying. It's her house. But after four years Hal can't take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he's not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"This utterly original haunted house tale is a joy." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The metaphor is layered and at times heartbreaking, as secrets held by both a house and a family come to light with terrifying poignancy in this wonderfully eerie debut." —Library Journal (starred review)

"A rich and wholly satisfying haunted house novel about dark family secrets and patterns of destruction. It will charm you and terrify you and break your heart, often within the same sentence. An exhilarating debut." —Rachel Harrison, National Bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle

This information about The September House was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Carissa Orlando

Carissa Orlando has a doctorate in clinical-community psychology and specializes in work with children and adolescents. In her "day job," Carissa works to improve the quality of and access to mental health care for children and their families. Prior to her career in psychology, Carissa studied creative writing in college and has written creatively in some form since she was a child. It was only a matter of time before Carissa, an avid horror fan for much of her life, merged her understanding of the human psyche and deep love for storytelling into a piece of fiction.

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