Spoilers for The September House novel by Carissa Orlando.

Fear in Flight Rating

🦇 Fear Rating: 🦇🦇🦇🦇 — Terrifying

Not because the ghosts kept me awake at night, but because the human horror underneath them is so disturbing.

🐾 Animal Safety: 🔴 Not Animal Safe

There are multiple animal deaths, particularly involving birds.

🩸 Gore: 🩸🩸 Heavy

Bleeding walls are only the beginning. The book contains domestic violence, some vivid and fairly graphic supernatural violence and injury.

👻 Horror Style:
🏚️ Haunted House
👻 Supernatural
🧠 Psychological Horror

There are haunted houses, and then there is the house in The September House.

Every September, the walls bleed. Ghosts wander through the rooms. Something deeply unpleasant lives in the basement. Margaret knows all of this.

She also knows the rules, and if she follows them, everything will be fine.

Probably.

That premise is what first made The September House such a wild, entertaining read. Margaret’s response to supernatural horror is almost aggressively practical. Strange noises? Expected. Blood running down the walls? Seasonal inconvenience. Ghosts? Some are more irritating than others.

There is something genuinely funny about watching a woman treat a violently haunted house like a difficult appliance she has learned to operate.

As the story progresses, Margaret’s fixation on rules becomes much darker and it’s clear the house is not the only frightening thing she has learned to live with.

If I Follow the Rules, I’ll Be Safe

Margaret believes in systems.

She knows which parts of the house are dangerous. She knows what happens in September. She knows which ghosts can be tolerated and which ones should be avoided.

Her rules give her a sense of control over something that should be completely uncontrollable.

For a while, they seem to work, which is what makes them so appealing.

There is a comfort in believing that life operates according to rules: if I do this, that will happen. If I avoid this, I can prevent that. If I behave correctly, I can stay safe.

Life doesn’t care about rules.

Neither does abuse.

Margaret’s relationship with her husband, Hal, gradually changes the way we understand almost everything about her. Her ability to accept the bizarre becomes less amusing when we realise how much she has already learned to normalise.

The supernatural horror is extreme.

The domestic horror is worse.

Margaret Is a Victim — And her daughter Katherine Is Too

This is where my feelings about the novel became complicated.

I liked Margaret and I wanted her to win.

I admired her stubbornness, her intelligence and her refusal to let the house drive her away.

And I also found myself becoming frustrated with her.

Margaret’s daughter grew up in the same household. She experienced the consequences of Hal’s violence too.

That matters.

It’s important to say clearly that Hal is responsible for Hal’s abuse and not Margaret.

One of the most damaging ideas surrounding domestic violence is the assumption that victims could simply make a different choice and solve the problem. Leaving an abusive relationship can be dangerous. Coercion, fear, financial dependence, threats and years of psychological manipulation can dramatically restrict someone’s choices.

Margaret should never be blamed for Hal choosing to hurt her.

Katherine’s experience cannot disappear however, simply because Margaret was also a victim.

A child living in a violent home is not an outside observer. They are living inside the fear, unpredictability and trauma too.

That is where The September House refuses to give us an easy answer.

Margaret can be both a loving mother and someone whose coping mechanisms failed to fully protect her daughter.

Those two things can exist at the same time.

When Survival Strategies Stop Working

Margaret’s rules make sense when viewed as survival strategies.

If she can learn Hal’s moods, perhaps she can prevent the next explosion.

If she can keep Katherine away at the right moment, perhaps she can protect her.

If she can understand the house, perhaps she can control it too.

The problem is that survival strategies are not the same thing as safety.

Someone may become extremely skilled at surviving an unsafe environment without ever actually making that environment safe.

That distinction may be the most disturbing idea in the entire novel.

Margaret’s rules give her structure. They allow her to continue functioning. They help her believe that catastrophe can be prevented if she remains careful enough.

They also encourage her to accept circumstances that should never have become normal.

The bleeding walls become manageable.

The ghosts become manageable.

Hal becomes manageable.

Until he isn’t.

The “Perfect Victim” Problem

I also appreciated that Margaret is not written as a perfectly behaved victim.

She makes choices that frustrated me.

She minimises things.

She rationalises.

She clings to explanations that are clearly falling apart.

I think that messiness is important.

There can be a strange expectation that victims of abuse must behave in exactly the way outsiders consider rational before they deserve complete sympathy.

They must leave at the right moment.

Recognise the danger immediately.

Make flawless decisions.

Protect everyone perfectly while living under circumstances specifically designed to undermine their ability to do exactly that.

Real people are rarely so neat.

Understanding Margaret does not require agreeing with every decision she makes.

Likewise, recognising the harm Katherine experienced does not require blaming Margaret for Hal’s violence.

There is room for both compassion and criticism.

That discomfort is part of what made the book stay with me.

The Real Horror of The September House

There are plenty of memorable supernatural moments in this novel.

It is creepy. It is bizarre. At times it is very funny. By the final stretch, it becomes gloriously chaotic.

The ghosts were not what disturbed me most.

The most frightening idea was how easily humans can adapt to circumstances that should be intolerable.

Margaret’s great strength is her ability to endure.

It is also one of her greatest vulnerabilities.

She can survive almost anything because she can convince herself that almost anything can become normal.

Just learn the rules.

Keep going.

Don’t look too closely at the blood running down the wall.

That resilience made me cheer her on.

It also made me want to shake her.

Perhaps that contradiction is exactly the point.

Final verdict: 4 bats out of 5 🦇🦇🦇🦇

The September House is a wildly entertaining haunted-house novel with much more going on beneath the floorboards than ghosts.

The supernatural horror is fun.

The human horror is much harder to shake.