The world of publishing can be a fickle place. One minute vampires are trending to be replaced by witches or werewolves the next cycle. Things usually cycle back again, but it’s a bit like the tide going in and out. You know what doesn’t go out of style, however? Creepy old houses. Why? Because they are awesome.

Synopsis

When Sana and her father move into an Akbar Manzil, an old mansion that serves as a boarding house in South Africa, Sana finds herself enamored with the house and its history. She ventures into a wing of the house that no one ever enters to find tantalizing clues of the lives lived before within the walls. In a prior timeline, we get the story of Meena, a young woman pulled out of poverty by a wealthy man for the purpose of becoming his second wife. As time moves on and Meena falls more in love with her husband, the cruelty she receives from the first wife and her mother-in-law intensifies. All the while, the Djinn has been watching and waiting.

Review

As I previously mentioned, I love creepy old houses. When done well, the house acts as a character whose sadness and whispers of forgotten pasts fill the space with a heavy foreboding. In this case, the Djinn acts as sort of the personification of the house. It’s tied to it, and it has no choice but to exist within the walls in a prison of memory and grief. This is quite a lovely and unique twist on the genre, and I enjoyed the fusion of the gothic and cultural elements. I see this book labeled as horror, and I wouldn’t call it that. It’s magical realism, for sure, but I never really got the sense I was reading a horror novel.

The two separate timelines are well-balanced and I found myself actually surprised at one detail as to how they came together in the end. There was something I had a suspicion about, and I was half right but wrong on the specifics. I did feel like there were some loose ends at the conclusion that left me feeling a bit dissatisfied, but the experience of reading this one is very pleasant. It has good pacing and, for the most part, I enjoyed the character development. I hated how obtuse Mr. Khan was in the face of Meena’s plight. His mother and first wife were positively awful to Meena, and at any point he could have stepped in and protected her. Instead, he lives his completely oblivious existence. Sadly, I think this is probably a very authentic portrait of family dynamics in traditional Indian households. He makes the money and leaves the management of the house to the matriarchs. And a son never defies his mother.

Overall, I enjoyed this for the lovely non-horror historical novel that it is even though I felt a little dissatisfied by the ending.

Published January 9, 2024 by Viking. ISBN 9780593653456. 320 pages. Hardcover.