The Family Plot

 

Today's post is on The Family Plot by Cherie Priest. It is 365 pages long and is published by TOR. The cover is dusk with a see through girl in the center. The intended reader is someone who likes haunted house stories, ghost stories, and southern Gothic at its best. There is foul language, no sex, and mild violence in this book. The story is told from the third person close of the main character Dahlia. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- music City Salvage is a family operation, owned and operated by Chuck Dutton: master stripper of doomed historic properties, and expert seller of all things old and crusty. But business is lean and times are tight, so he's thrilled when the aged and esteemed Augusta Withrow appears in his office, bearing an Offer he really ought to refuse. She has a massive family estate to unload- lock, stock, and barrel. For a check and a handshake, it's all his.
It's a big check. it's a firm handshake. And it's enough of a gold mine that he assigns his daughter Dahlia to personally oversee the project.
Dahlia preps a couple of trucks, takes a small crew, and they caravan down to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the ancient Withrow house is waiting- and so is a barn, a carriage house, and a small, overgrown cemetery that Augusta Withrow left out of the paperwork.
Augusta Withrow left out of lot of things.
The property is in unusually great shape for a condemned building. It's empty but it isn't abandoned. Something in the Withrow mansion is angry and lost. This is its last chance to raise hell before the house is gone forever, and there's still plenty of room in the strange little family plot.

Review- Priest makes the haunted house story new again. We get creepy shadows, flickering lights, and rainstorms that never seem to end. We get a fittingly mysterious end. Priest does it all and makes it all work wonderfully. Dahlia is a smart and sympathetic heroine. She is recovering from a bad divorce, where she lost the house that she loved, and hates to tear down the Withrow home. But the ghosts in the house soon make that must more palatable. Add in some interesting side character, both with and without flesh, Dahlia has quite a ride on her hands. With some well placed scared for both Dahlia and reader, we have an excellent book to read on a stormy night; but read it with the windows closed.

I give this book s Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.