The Family Plot

This is a book about a haunted house.
The person who lived here before me died.
A lot of the evil stuff in the book happens in a small bathroom with pink tiles and no ventilation, with water that takes awhile to heat up and quickly goes cold.
This describes my bathroom, too.
You know what else could have been true in the book, that is true where I live?
Things go bump in the night enough to make people not want to -stay- the night. There is also a loud, incessant, leak in the bathroom somewhere. If the book had -those- details, I would probably be hammering out a lease-breaking document of some kind.
So, my place's natural setting added to the creepiness of the book.

Midway through the book, I was so excited about how well-written and scary it show more was, in a good way, that I couldn't -wait- to read the book again. Ten pages later, I was on the brink of pissing myself, my heart was in my throat, I vaguely remembered to breathe and my hands were tense. My brain was fried with fear and I kept turning pages. I love scary, well-written books, and this author DID AMAZING.

I identified the most with the ghosts in the story. I felt equally bad for and terrified of them. The ending of the book was MARVELOUS because I felt like I understood how Abigail got to that point, and it makes me so happy when characters like Abigail aren't defeated. Partially because it's predictable and boring, and partially because the way some authors do it tells me "I never cared about the character you most identified with in the first place, and anyone who identifies with said character should suffer immensely." There's also a sense of "The characters were never in any real danger anyway." That last one makes for a bland book. So, the author deftly avoided all that and I am pleased. show less

Finally got to this one (I have a huge to-be-read stack and keep adding to it). Was eager because I remember liking Boneshaker. This book was not set in a dystopian future, but on a Chattanooga mountainside, primarily in an old house, abandoned for at least 40 years, that a team of salvagers had come to retrieve what they could before the house was demolished and the land sold. Parts of the tale were like watching This Old House, which we used to do while renovating our former 1894 Queen Anne Victorian home. Parts were a ghost story, which, in some places, mingled more with the house than others. I wish I could have gotten more of a sense of place for the story. I don't mean the house exactly, but more of that bit of Chattanooga, though show more that may be because I've never been there. My one planned trip was aborted because my mother became ill. To my mind, the story could have pretty much happened in any rural, mountainous setting. It's a shame not to give a lovely part of Tennessee it's proper due.
Part old house salvage, part ghost story -- that about covers it. I will say that the ghost antics and actions were a weaker part for me, especially ghost motivation (though there were more than one flitting around that place.) It didn't stop me from reading it, nor will it stop me from reading another of the author's books. There are many ways to tell a ghost story, but I'd not seen one with a strong woman leading a salvage company crew in to recover antique objects and ornamentation, before. It would be fun to see her, and her gang again, but maybe where a bit more of the setting is shared. show less

A Creepy HGTV/CW Crossover

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley.)

"In all the years she’d been talking to houses, the houses had never talked back."

"We can’t salvage ghosts. They don’t sell for shit.”

Music City Salvage is struggling: several of their clients stiffed them on pretty hefty bills, and their warehouse of stale stock just isn't moving. So when old money Augusta Withrow approaches them about buying the salvage rights to her family estate, owner Chuck Dutton jumps at the maybe-too-good-to-be-true chance. At forty grand, it's a gamble: that's more cash than they've got in the bank, but the payoff could be huge. Or the deal just might bankrupt the family-owned company.

Chuck's show more daughter Dahlia heads up the salvage team. Also on board: her cousin Bobby, with whom she hasn't been on the best of terms lately, not since he sided with her ex-husband Andy in the divorce; Bobby's son, Gabe; and resident nerd Brad, a salvage virgin. The quartet has a week to travel the two hours from Nashville to Chattanooga, strip the mansion and numerous outbuildings clean, and pack it all up before the wrecking crew arrives to do its worst.

It should be easy peasy, except that the estate is situated at the base of Lookout Mountain, and there's a storm a-brewing, threatening to wash them all away. And Bobby is an alcoholic, and Dahl might be headed down that path too, and they kind of hate each others' guts. Oh, and the estate is haunted. By no fewer than four ghosts. What could possibly go wrong?

Inspired in part by a rerun of Salvage Dawgs, The Family Plot is a new take on ye ole ghost story. It's like a HGTV/CW crossover; Salvage Dawgs meets Supernatural. (I pictured Dahlia as a brown-haired, hard-drinking, potty-mouthed Nicole Curtis.) Indeed, the salvage crew's easy acceptance of apparitions - plus their commitment to "the family business" - definitely brought to mind the Winchesters.

"Jesus, Brad. You’re a Georgia boy, ghosts shouldn’t be news to you. All of us down here, we’re not just living on battlefields. We’re living on graveyards. Even the fake ones have bodies in them, don’t you know?"

The story is a little slow to get started, but once it picks up - at around 10-15% - it's a tense and thrilling ride. Priest mixes things up by producing a variety of specters: some of them big baddies, others more benevolent helpers. At least one falls a little in between: a sleazy scumbag in life, and mostly inconsequential in the after.

She also gives as a creepy and compelling mystery in the form of Augusta's ancestors, Judson, Eleanor, Abigail, Buddy, and Hazel. A graveyard - the titular family plot - that may or may not be fake, a Halloween prank gone wrong. Ancient medical records that look like something out of American Horror Story: Asylum. Water that shocks and a door that locks seemingly of its own volition. A decades-dead spiritualist and a woman done wrong.

That last plot point reminded me of Yesternight by Cat Winters, which I devoured not that long ago. I don't want to go into too much detail because spoilers, but I rooted for the ladies - betrayed by their lovers, by society, by their very bodies - in both scenarios.

“Men don’t care. Even when they know what they’ve done, and what it means—they don’t care. They just leave us behind to clean up their messes … like they never had no part in making them.”

I mean, so maybe it's not a sin that warrants death, but - you can't deny the fundamental unfairness of it all. Even now, but especially back then. That's why the ode to "wicked women" in the final chapter kind of chapped my hide. She might be wicked, okay, but what do you call a guy like Gregory? (Imma go with Sam and Dean's likely answer, "a bag of dicks.")

Definitely worth a read, preferably around the Halloween season: both because it's festive, and also this is when the story takes place. This is my first Priest book, but now I definitely want to give The Borden Dispatches and The Clockwork Century series a try.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2016/10/28/the-family-plot-by-cherie-priest/ show less

I'm a sucker for a good haunted house book. Or flick, for that matter. Yes, they can be repetitive, and yes, they're a little overdone, and yes, my husband would probably be thrilled if I announced I never wanted to see a horror movie ever again, let's just watch anime, let me go get my textbook to learn Japanese so we can watch it with no subtitles. But that's not going to happen. Well, maybe the learning Japanese part will eventually but not yet.

Part of the draw of a good haunted house is the story behind the menace now threatening you -- something awful happened to somebody somewhere and now they just want to lash out and hurt anyone in their reach, and whoever's in reach needs to figure out what the fuck actually happened just to show more save their own behind. And God only knows why that poor sucker was in reach in the first place -- usually through a situation where they're backed into a corner, where something looks too good to be true because it is.

The awesome thing is that Cherie Priest manages to make it original. I mean, the tropes of the story are there -- they have to be, it's part of a haunted house -- but this time, it's based on a company coming in to strip a beautiful old house of its antique pieces, the hardwood floors, the marble mantlepieces, the old wooden banisters made of wood that doesn't grow in the United States anymore (sidenote: if you ever want to hear about a tragedy, read about some of the decimation of the American chestnut, man...).

And while Priest is famous (infamous?) for her steampunky Clockwork Century books (Boneshaker et al), there's part of me that really feels like this this a return to her Southern gothic roots that she left off with the series of Eden Moore. She brings a lot of cultural flavor to her books that not an awful lot of people manage, and the result is gorgeous.

I also have to say that I really loved Dahlia, our protagonist with a penchant for old houses and a past that's left her just a touch wounded, but determined to make it work and possibly stronger for it. Priest also really managed to convey what it's like to work for a family owned business and the stresses and burdens it brings -- the 'to you it's just another job, but to me it's not just my livelihood but the livelihood of my family and employees' thing.

Good read, either way. Darn you, Cherie, you kept me up until 3 a.m. finishing this book. ;) show less

A wealthy, elderly woman approaches the Dutton family salvage business with a generous offer: anything and everything remaining on her family's dilapidated estate is up for grabs for a mere $40,000. When Dahlia and her crew arrive at the property to start the task of dismantling, it's immediately clear that it is a veritable gold mine. However, after Dahlia glimpses an ethereal woman in a dress and discovers an overgrown cemetery on the property, things take a turn for the creepy.

I didn't plan it that way, but this was a perfect, spooky read for October. There is a small amount of gore and violence, but it isn't gratuitous and occurs only during the climax near the end. I appreciated that it managed to avoid many of the tropes common to show more horror stories. Prior to reading this I was largely unaware of the salvage industry and what it entailed, beyond disaster recovery. It was heartening to discover, albeit via fiction, the extent to which reclamation of furniture, architecture and fixtures is performed on aging properties as well. Recommended. show less

I found this an engrossing and fast-paced read, and I really liked the main character, but the treatment of the ghost and her motivations ultimately kind of bothered me. The book toyed briefly with the idea that she had experienced trauma that changed her, and that she might have done terrible things out of fear and desperation as a living person and as a ghost might be lashing out in anger and hurt rather than malice, but ultimately seems to come down on the side of "nah, she was just an evil and unhinged person innately, unrelated to anything that might have happened to her." I found that both less interesting than the alternative and sort of unsettlingly dismissive of what she went through.

I love a good haunted house story and this one is just perfect. (Hot tip: save this for October and thank me later!)

Reminiscent of The Haunting of Hill House and Insidious, this novel features a tough, slightly damaged heroine who didn't make me eyeball roll once; serious place as character; and creepiness in spades.

The plot is pretty simple: Dahlia, whose family runs a salvage business, is tasked with tearing apart an old estate in a matter of days, a job which requires her and her small crew -- cousin Bobby, Bobby's son Gabe, and new colleague Gabe -- to sleep in the house while they work at all hours to salvage what is can be resold.

The house has other ideas, obviously.

While some of the ghostliness of the story was predictable, I show more found the anticipation upped my eager jumpiness. But Priest surprised me with a ghostly encounter I'd never considered before, and it has made me even jumpier when I'm alone. The book's narrative vibe is pragmatic and grounded -- Dahlia puts up with no BS -- which makes the creepier elements all the scarier: if Dahlia's nervous, then I'm jumping out of my skin!

I can't say more without giving away anything, so if you're into haunted houses, add this to your TBR immediately. This was my second Priest novel (after Maplecroft, which I uh-dored!) and I've got everything else of hers in my queue as she clearly excels at the stuff I yearn for in a supernatural-y novel: mood, atmosphere, and complicated, cranky heroines (mmmmm). show less