Book Review: The House That Eats the Dead by Max Doty

I have a confession to make: I just couldn't finish this book.

And that is particularly depressing because I was really looking forward to The House That Eats the Dead by Max Doty. The premise immediately grabbed me. A house that literally feeds on living things, erasing them from everyone's memories except those of the people who own the house? That is exactly the kind of strange, unsettling haunted-house concept that should have been right up my alley.

Unfortunately, I couldn't push through.

The biggest problem for me was the first-person perspective. I have to admit that first-person narration is rarely my cup of tea. In fact, I probably dislike it in about 90 percent of the books I read, and unfortunately, this was one of those cases where the perspective kept me from connecting with the story.

Because everything is filtered through Claire's eyes, we experience the house and its increasingly disturbing behavior almost entirely through her perspective. That might have worked for me if I had connected with Claire, but I didn't. Instead, I found her to be one of the most depressing protagonists I've encountered in a while. Reading the book actually started making me feel depressed myself, which isn't exactly what I'm looking for when I settle in with a horror novel.

The first-person perspective also made the other characters feel rather flat to me. They seemed more like cardboard representations surrounding Claire than fully developed people in their own right. And that's especially disappointing in a haunted-house story, because some of the best haunted-house stories allow us to see the house through the eyes of everyone who lives there. Each person brings a different fear, interpretation, and reaction to the supernatural.

Here, I felt trapped inside Claire's experience, and unfortunately, it wasn't an experience I wanted to remain in.

I know there is an interesting and genuinely creepy concept underneath all of this. A house that eats things that were once alive is a wonderfully bizarre premise, and the idea that its victims are simply erased from everyone's memories is particularly disturbing. I really wanted to see where that concept would go.

But sometimes a book simply doesn't work for a particular reader, and that's what happened here. I couldn't finish The House That Eats the Dead, despite genuinely wanting to like it.

So this is one of those reviews where I can't really tell you whether the book gets better, because I didn't make it to the end. What I can tell you is why it didn't work for me: the first-person narration, the lack of depth I felt in the surrounding characters, and a protagonist whose emotional state made the reading experience more depressing than frightening.

And honestly, I'm still a little disappointed. Because a house that eats the dead—and apparently everything else that was once alive—is such a fantastic horror premise.

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If exploring haunted places, forgotten histories, and mysterious estates is your idea of a good time, then Eleanor's Garden may be your next read.

Hidden beyond its gates, the Mora Estate is anything but an ordinary country manor. Its halls hold generations of secrets, unexplained tragedies, and a darkness that refuses to stay buried. As the estate begins to reveal its past, one question remains: is the house haunted...or is something far older waiting within?

If you enjoy Gothic fiction, haunted houses, and slow-building supernatural suspense, Eleanor's Garden invites you to step through the gates—if you dare.

Explore more of my books here.