Happily married newlyweds Kate and Tommy Puglisi are thrilled to arrive at the doorstep of their very old but new-to-them house in Becchina, one of many little towns across the Italian landscape on the brink of becoming ghost towns. In an effort to attract young enterprising people like them, the town’s mayor has opened up abandoned homes to newcomers for the too good to be true price of a single euro and the promise to revitalize the home. Upon arriving, the couple expects to be welcomed with open arms by Tommy’s grandparents, long-time residents of the town. Unfortunately, they find that Tommy’s grandmother is angry and fearful of their new home. At first perplexed, the couple soon finds out why the townsfolk all whisper behind closed doors about the house of last resort, a house that contains a very dark history that isn’t quite as buried as it previously seemed.

Alright, I’m going to start with the super petty thing that irritated me about this book and just get it out of the way. Unfortunately, this is a very common problem with genre fiction written by male authors who have certain fantasies in their heads about women. No woman in her right mind is going to be wearing a damn thong to bed. If you need to air out your butt cheeks at night, just sleep naked! And why the hell are we reading about Kate’s butt floss so much?? He mentioned her well-marinated underthings at least three times, which I consider three times too many. I came for the creepy scary stuff not the creepy EWWWW stuff. Frankly, the author wants us to believe Kate is this perfect meek little woman, the whole package, completely devoted to her husband and the patriarchal approved imperative to show off her butt cheeks. Simply the fact that she puts up with Tommy’s bullshit is enough to make me not like her. Sorry, but that doesn’t work on me.

All jokes aside, I am trying to make a point about what I didn’t like about these characters. Rather than being realistic and complex humans, these came across more as caricatures, the woman especially presenting as the type of woman the author thinks all women should be. I never saw the relationship between Tommy and Kate as being anything beyond superficial even though I’m TOLD by Tommy that they are happy and in love and blah blah blah. He would sing her praises one moment and then be overtly disrespectful the next moment. Seriously, he would criticize and make fun of her for the dumbest of things. Both of them were judgy as hell about their friends from the States not wanting to also drop their entire lives and move to a sleepy town in Italy. Because sure, we all have that privilege of dropping everything and moving overseas. It’s not like the rest of us have limited funds, jobs that can only be done from where we live or extended family and friends we’d like to stay near. You think I don’t want to buy a house in Italy for $1??? I can’t tell you how many times I watched Under the Tuscan Sun during the mid-2000’s. TAKE ME TO MY VILLA!

Beyond my petty quibbles, this is pretty standard fare in the haunted house / possession subgenre of supernatural horror. It’s pretty well paced, and it has some fairly exciting and suspenseful scenes. I enjoy the main historical concept surrounding the supernatural aspect of this novel but it really offered nothing new and the execution could use some polish. Character motivations and actions were sometimes nonsensical. For instance, one character finds out his beloved spouse is lying on the ground somewhere with critical wounds but he chooses to stay and help the woman he just met rescue her husband, something she should be able to do by herself if that pesky vagina doesn’t get in the way. Realistically, the thong was chafing so that is a distinct possibility. Since the author didn’t find it necessary to share the underwear preferences of the male characters, I merely have to assume his penis was in top form and still capable of saving the day. *eye roll* No one would do that! I would not just assume someone else was helping my loved one so I could go and see if some other random dude was ok. I’d be going as fast as I could to the side of the person I love. I mean WTF???

That’s one example of things that just didn’t make sense in this novel, but there were quite a few. It all resulted in me not really caring about what happened to Tommy or Kate by the end, and that’s sad.

Overall, I’d say that unless you just love creepy old house stories and have always been looking for that one gem that tells you repeatedly what kind of panties our heroines are sporting, you could skip this one.

Published January 30, 2024 by St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 9781250285898. Hardcover. 292 pages.