Review: The House at Watch Hill

The House at Watch Hill by Karen Marie Moning
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

I feel like I know what a percentage of the reviews are going to be like for this, “This could have been an email”. BUT, hear me out, if you're going to buy this book, buy it right now. This is for all my Gothic atmosphere reader friends, read this during the months of late August through December first. Is it 384 pages of set-up that could have been condensed into a pre-series novella? Probably. BUT, it is dripping in such delicious Fall/spooky season atmosphere, that I reveled (ok, a little after the midway point before the ending ramped up, I maybe felt it drag some) in the story. Moning was atmosphere-ing and crafting for that rent that was due and I was completely transported. I know it's not how publishing works but I would have loved this published September first and then the second immediately available October first, because, hold my hand, this ends on a big cliffhanger. 

From the ashes of my mother's fiery grave, a wild thing had arisen. 

With any Gothic atmospheric story worth it's salt, there's a spooky house, and our lead character, the story is mostly told all from her point-of-view, has just inherited one, with conditions. Readers meet Zo as she's begging for a job, after having lost another due to having to call in sick to take care of her mother. Her mother has cancer and since it's only been Zo and her mother all her life all the care falls to Zo, they've been on the run since Zo was fifteen with her mother claiming Zo's father is after them. We get a little clue that Zo may have some magic to her, insight into feeling something is very wrong, the house she was renting burned down, with her mother in it. Before she can even really process that, she's notified of the inheritance and abandoning Indiana to try and start over in Divinity, Louisiana. There, the townspeople all seem to act odd around her and she learns that in order to inherit the House at Watch Hill and the 140 million (!!!!) estate, she'll need to live in the house, alone, for three years. 

Home to three centuries of secrets, blood, and lies, the mansion on the hill was a dark, slumbering beast. 

There's more will restrictions and hoops for her to jump through and she starts to clue in that some very weird things are going on. It's a lot of searching/wandering around the house and secondary characters acting shady, the attorney that almost seems fatherly towards Zo but won't spill his secrets, the mechanic Devlin who acts protective and attracted towards her but seems to be holding back, an owl that seems to understand her when she talks, and her bestfriend from highschool who is suddenly saying she needs to tell something very important that Zo's own mother kept from her. You're going to need patience and want to sink into the atmosphere if you're going to enjoy this. For my romance friends, there's some will they/won't they tension between Zo and Devlin and when Zo first arrives in town, she hits the sheets with someone she meets in a bar (the man introduced himself as Kellan, then we learn later, last name MacKeltar, yes I screeched), so possible love triangle on horizon, but she's pretty strong with Devlin in this. 

And I was a witch. 

As I mentioned the latter second half definitely ramps up with action and answers, there's another mysterious pov (Alisdair) that pops up every once and a while in the book and we get, a small, idea about who they turn out to be. It's pretty obvious throughout that Zo has some sort of magical abilities, with ominous outside characters swirling around her and her trying to figure out if they are friend or foe. You're going to get the set-up for the lore of the world, Highblood and Royal families, dark and light witches, warm and cold vampires, shifters, and the mysterious grey witches to ground you in the new series world, along with really getting to know Zo. What you'll also get though, is not much story movement, it's vast majority set-up until the end, and a big cliffhanger. However, this was dripping in delicious Gothic atmosphere that would be absolutely prefect for the spooky season.

View all my reviews