Date: November 6, 2025
Author: Sarah Gailey
Genre: middle grade MG, realistic fiction, novel in verse (poetry)
I have been on a mission lately to find a truly scary story, and I thought I had finally found it in this one. Within the first 30 pages it’s become nighttime in the story and young Vera awakes to scary sounds coming from under her bed and the wall by her head. Her dad comes to the rescue when he hears her blood curdling scream.
Questions Vera pondered, but didn’t ask: Why is it the middle of the night and he’s (her dad) filthy with a tangy smell? And: is that smell blood?
I find it weird that the dad warns her from entering the basement for ‘fear of wild raccoons and possums’ getting her. Was he a serial killer and burying bodies in the basement? Did he have someone locked up downstairs even now!? OMG more to come!
Next day of reading: I devoured this book. I loved the writing. I hated the ending.
Spoiler alert: The scary thing that was going bump in the night, terrifying the daylights out of Vera was in fact a living(?) embodiment of the house? All the emotions and such wanting to do nothing but love and care for Vera? But why, if the House loved her so much, would it scare her with trivial things such as the tug of war for the blanket in the middle of the night? Then dragging her bed across the room while she was sleeping in it? I was all hyped up for a humdinger of an ending and instead it fizzled like a let-go-of-balloon deflating and flitting off into the night.