It'd have to be Hill House..... It just means so much to me: it immediately hit me like a truck, and reading about Eleanor felt like reading about myself (which made me feel Seen like never before but also made me realise I really needed to work through and on a lot of things, because you do not, in fact, want to be Eleanor); it was also the first book i managed to finish in YEARS (after highschool had made me completely stop reading and believe I wasn't good at it anymore), which made me feel so accomplished and so hopeful that I started a journal to jot down Good Things in the hope that this was the beginning of me getting better (over the years Bad Things made their way there too but I've also chronicled events and personal growth I'd have minimized otherwise 🤷‍♀️), and it's in the back of that journal that I ended up starting my reading journal, which helped me really get back into reading and eventually led me here!! I also ended up studying this book in college as part of my American Gothic class and picked it for my finals, which made it the very first time in my entire existence I managed to write a full paper, structured and fully finished with introduction, several parts and subparts and a conclusion, by hand, in the allotted 4 hours. (And I still remember and am still proud of what I explored in that paper!) School has always been a huge struggle for me on that front so accomplishing this truly felt unbelievable. I think it's a great book to read and a fascinating one to study and I frequently reread it with that in mind, so yeah even though TLT and the Radiant Emperor duology also spoke to me in different ways like few things before (and none since 😔😢), this is a pretty easy choice!!