this was true gothic fiction.

we start in a house where shadows grab at your ankles and bother you, saints appear to you as praying mantis, your teeth start hurting and falling out of nowhere, and cadavres live in the walls. our two protagonists are an adult fmc and her grandmother, both share the same familial manor in shambles and seem to distrust each other while still remaining loyal to the other.

i loved the way we knew from the beginning that something had happened but only got to know what towards the end where it all starts to make sense. i highlighted the hell out of those last two or three chapters because of the pertinent class and money commentary from both protagonists who had very different lived experiences but came out of it with the same conclusions.

i thought the atmosphere, the pacing, the narration and the flashbacks were all perfectly executed, and i've not read a book this well written in a long time. i also give all the compliments i can to the translators because although i don't speak spanish, it felt very close to what i imagine the original to be.

i have no words i just feel miserable ._.

in a few words ࿐ ✧ appalachian magic ✧ small town shenanigans ✧ fmc's cousin disappears as a dead man shows up on fmc's doorstep

representation ࿐ ✧ secondary sapphic dynamic ✧ visually impaired / practically blind secondary character ✧ secondary latina character

positives ࿐ ✧ i found the whole setting to be pretty enchanting and the main character, rhia, to be a compelling narrator. the way we enter the story is a dead man (which rhia knows, because small town so they grew up together) showing up in front of her house and she is not as distraught by it as one would expect. ✧ this intriguing novella puts you immediately at the start of the problem without wasting the reader's time. it did this while still unveiling important details and lore about the characters throughout the short story. i appreciated how evenly it was paced like that.

negatives ࿐ ✧ not even typos, i saw a pretty concerning amount of grammatically incorrect sentences for a 92 page novella. it got to a point where i started to question whether i didn't learn english properly as my second language. ✧ i either missed something or this relationship between rhia and owen evolved out of nowhere? one minute, he's a client for her furniture business, and the next, rhia is thinking of telling her cousin about them.

memorable quotes ࿐ ✧ « The river changes her song for all sorts of reasons, or his song. Rivers don’t really have gender. It doesn’t matter, but the river is so big, so vast, that I want to make it seem smaller. I want it to be a person I can talk to , not a spirit as old as the hills. »

thank you to netgalley and interstellar flight press for giving me the opportunity to read this free e-arc in exchange for my honest review!

📅 publication date: 7 september 2026

| rating: 3.75★ ⋆ — ⋆ — ⋆ — ⋆ — ⋆ — ⋆ — ⋆ — ⋆ — ⋆

in a few words ࿐ ✧ grief materialises as a haunted house that eats people? ✧ own-voice fiction ✧ three generations of women (re)connect

representation ࿐ ✧ palestinian diaspora ✧ palestinian-american fmc, palestinian cast of characters ✧ nakba survivors

positives ࿐ ✧ the writing was beautiful and nostalgic. ✧ i got to travel to palestine through marina discovering her grandmother's hometown. ✧ following marina, haifa, and rania, three generations of women with a different relationship vis-à-vis their country, was a privilege. ✧ marina and khaled's friendship was very endearing, i loved whenever they were together on the page.

negatives ࿐ ✧ i got lost in the purple prose more than once which can be a positive for some readers, but i struggled to stay focused because of this. ✧ maybe my expectations were wrong but i was expecting the horror to manifest differently? the book is marketed as a haunted house horror yet the haunted house acts in a horror manner only at the very end of the book. there are definitely horror elements, but i did not think they were involved as much as i expected, other than the perpetual horrors of reality in occupied palestine.

memorable quotes ࿐ ✧ « It reached for her from below the sea, weighting the house of her grandmother, and the city, and its people, in a reality they never should have known. It is Death. It stretches over the city for it lives here—it has seeped into the pores of each stone and formed the whispers of every recollection of murder. It has been fired from every Israeli military rifle. It has pooled around the body of every Bilal Khalidi as they bled out. And with every bullet, every real estate signing and tar pouring, Death’s home was cemented. »

࿐ nobody is free until all of us are free. from the river to the sea, palestine will be free.

thank you to netgalley and orbit uk x run for it for giving me the opportunity to read this e-arc in exchange for my honest opinions!

📅 publication date: 22 september 2026