Book Review of The House Where Death Lives
The Children’s Book Review
Written by Alex Brown, Nova Ren Suma, Gina Chen, Traci Chee, Linsey Miller, Rosiee Thor, Courtney Gould, Kay Costales, Liz Hull, Shelly Page, Justine Pucella Winans, Sandra Proudman, C.L McCollum, Nora Elghazzawi, Tori Bovalino and G. Haron Davis
Edited by Alex Brown
Ages: 14+ | 352 Pages
Publisher: Page Street YA (2024) | ISBN-13: 979-8890030122
What to Expect: Supernatural, horror, LGBTQ+, death, and family relationships.
The very best horror stories are about more than gore and violence; they are deep explorations of what it means to be a human being among other human beings and what it means to test the very limits of strong emotions—love, grief, hatred, desire, fear, guilt. In this collection, stories from various award-winning authors bring the supernatural into what is traditionally supposed to be a safe space—the home.
In the attic, a teenage ghost who doesn’t realize she’s a ghost is reaching out through a mirror for a friend. In the top bedroom, a girl feeds her peers to a ghoul to bring her dead sister back to life. In the library, a collection of mummified babysitters stacked on the shelves, feeding the monstrous appetite of a baby. There’s a house run by a fiendish AI, in which the contestants play a deadly game to try and win their freedom and another in which a seductive fairy waits in the game room to play with your memory. In this deliciously spooky anthology, home becomes the place where ghosts and monsters are waiting.
Each story is beautifully written to be haunting and atmospheric, leaving as many questions unanswered as it raises and lingering in the mind long after reading. The queer and sexual content means this is a volume for more mature readers; however, the material is sensitively handled and profoundly thought-provoking, making it an excellent choice for both enjoyment and critical analysis.
The House Where Death Lives is one of the best ghost-story anthologies out there.
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About the Editor
Alex Brown is a queer, biracial Pilipino American writer who loves rooting for the final girl―especially if she’s a monster. Alex is also one of the co-creators and producers of The Bridge, a spooky, folklore-filled audio drama podcast with over 1,000,000 downloads to date. Alex has a short story in The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror, which was an instant Indie Bestseller, and her YA comedy-horror debut, Damned If You Do, was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.
Alex co-edited Night of the Living Queers, a YA Horror anthology featuring stories solely written by Queer Authors of Color, which has received multiple starred reviews. In a past life, Alex worked on Supernatural and Netflix’s Resident Evil, though she’s now traded in her Hollywood lifestyle and is happy to work with queer college kids. She enjoys spending time with her partner and their three chaotic cats somewhere in northern California.
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