Eric Ross and his two daughters are running from their past, drifting from town to town, making their way to his ancestral home in West Texas. He’s had to live off the grid, taking questionable jobs to support his family. When he is offered the opportunity for a large payoff to stay in a haunted house and observe paranormal phenomena in a small town in Texas owned by a powerful scion, Eric cannot say no. For Eric, his past is a lot scarier than a haunted house, or so he thinks. The Spite House is hungry.

The Spite House is a contemporary novel with a Gothic feel. While it’s a ghost story, Compton carefully keeps the focus on the characters and not so much the strange happenings in the eponymous house. This novel is as much an exploration of human nature and what drives its characters to make choices, both desperate and deliberate, and the harm that results. Stories about characters who are African American and their part in the American story are still underrepresented and are highly appreciated. Eric is a protagonist that readers will feel invested in, along with his daughters, Dess and Stacy. While revelations abound and unfold as the novel progresses, there is still an element of mystery and unanswered questions that will leave the reader unsettled and wanting more. Johnny Compton writes with confidence, distinctively combining a beautiful eloquence with a down-to-earth narrative voice. Powerful imagery comes through in the writing, giving the novel a cinematic feel. Readers who want a straightforward ghost story won’t find that here, but instead it's a character exploration built on the framework of a haunted house story. Tense, unsettling, disturbing, atmospheric, and at the same time oddly hopeful in its portrayal of human nature, The Spite House will linger in the reader’s consciousness long after they finish this short, but effective novel.

Thanks again for the chance to review the book this one wasnt a favorite of mine.. I feel like it was just a miss for me in general.. I think the writing was easy to get through but there was just parts of the book that wasnt sitting right with me.. I do think that it is a book that would suit others.

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me. I found the premise incredible intriguing, and I liked the introduction of multiple POVs. I think that having multiple POVs in a story like this can be very appealing to a reader, who is trying to unravel the mystery of what is going on in the house, and getting to see that through multiple characters' eyes is a great way to make that process intriguing and complex for the reader. However, I did end up DNF'ing this title as I had a hard time with the prose style. I also felt that the writing was sometimes difficult to follow in terms of who was speaking, where people were in the room, and other simple logistical issues. It made it very difficult for me to get lost in the story. If it was a purposeful disorientation, unfortunately for me it was too confusing to persist through. I'll be interested to read further reviews of this work.

The Spite House is an incredible take on family, and how far we will go to protect those we love. Johnny Compton breathes new life into the haunted house trope, and his characterization is off the charts good. Eric, Dess, and Stacy live on the page, and i would be happy to see them again in another book down the road. There's plenty of mystery to unravel, haunted history, and an ending that is inevitable but satisfying. Highly recommend!

The Spite House was an interesting book. I love haunted house stories and this one had a great concept though the execution faltered at times.

This isn’t my usual genre but I enjoyed it a lot. I liked the set up, the characters, almost all of whom are hiding things? Eric and his daughters are on the run, from what isn’t clear. There’s ghosts and curses and a lot of spooky happenings. I don’t know that I found it as scary as I expected but it was full of tension and I couldn’t stop reading. It had me hooked from the beginning.

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar

Even though humans tend to be good, to do good things, sometimes they also want to be mean. They are angry, and they are spiteful. But when all that energy is fed to an object or place, it can take over and grow.

The Spite House starts with Eric Ross looking for a job request where it’s asking for a group of people to live for a period of time on the Masson house a.k.a. the Spite house for $100,000. Given that Eric and his daughters are traveling through Texas, they need the income, and he applies for it.

The next day he and his daughters Dessa, 18 years old, and Stacy, 7 years old, make their way to the Masson House to interview the current owner, Eunice Houghton, who is a tech billionaire and owner of most of the town.

As soon as they set foot in the Masson house, all three of the Ross family feel something off. But the Ross are running away from something else, and they need the money. Eric will do all he can to make a future for his daughters, even if he must fight the entities that live in the Spite House.

The Spite House was a very interesting story, which I really liked. It was refreshing to read a horror/thriller ghost story with a side of mystery to understand the reason why things are happening in the world and to the Ross Family. All of the characters have a secret agenda, for most of them is to stay alive.

The Ross family is peculiar, Eric, Dessa, and Stacy. Each of them hides something from the other but does try to help and keep the rest of their family safe. Eric and Dessa are keeping a greater secret from Stacy, the reason why they are moving so much. Stacy being a young girl, has been having dreams where she can communicate with other people far away and see people that have died. Eric, while trying to provide for his daughters, makes the decision to live in the Masson House, but he has already seen something similar to what is happening in the house.

The Spite House has many characters, some of them alive and others dead. One character that I didn’t trust since first meeting her was Eunice Houghton, the current owner of the house. As we read the book, we learn about her reasons to have people living in the house and the lengths she will go to get the answers she wants. With Eunice’s work other women, Dana and Lafonda, who are starting to wonder if the intentions of an 80-year-old woman are the best and if something evil is really happening in the house. Meeting the Ross family is the last straw, and they will try to save them if they can.

The spite house itself has many things going on. The description of it being a four-story tall house but with a small width makes it hard to imagine someone living there, and even more for a family of three. One part I couldn’t imagine was the bulbuls outside the corridor that it mentions. Just given the summary of the book, the reader knows this is a ghost story and the spite house has a ghost. Specifically, the ghost of the owner who built the house, Pete Masson who himself lived and died twice, and his niece and nephew that disappeared in the house.

One of the things that I liked most of this story was the description of the cold temperature people feel near spirits.

“Well, the second thing to happen, immediately following her heart attack, was that the temperature dropped. This was not a cold spot. It was not a chill. This was like the sun had retreated…”

“How deep is the cold they carry with them? I’ll tell you. Imagine your bones turning to ice so fast you don’t have time to scream. Imagine a cold so deep it makes the day grayer without a cloud in the sky. Hard to imagine, isn’t it…”

“No, actually. It was cold as hell. Cold as I’ve ever been, and I’ve lived up north, as I told you. I’ve been through some ugly winters, but that room in West Texas, of all places, in the summer, was the coldest place I’ve ever been in. It was like being on the dark side of the moon or something…”

The Spite House was a wild ride and if you like ghost/horror stories, then I recommend it to you.

Sometimes the only thing we can do is be spiteful.

3.5 rounding up. This had a really great premise and some creepy moments. However, I felt like the ending didn't quite come together and I was a bit lost (could be a me problem). Overall, I enjoyed the characters and the story, including the historical elements that made me think.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
More of my review can be found in my February Wrap up video

I felt this book started out promising, but didn't quite deliver...

Haunted house story, sign me up! This was an anticipated read of mine, so I was excited when I received this ARC. I loved the premise of this and the meaning behind the Spite House. I really liked Eric and both his daughters, but wish I had more time to connect with them. There were way too many additional POVs for me. I felt they could've been left out or told within our main characters POV. This made things a bit confusing and threw me off from fully getting connected to Eric and his daughters.

From the start, I became invested in finding out what Eric is running from and the house. There was so much history behind the reputation of the Spite House and suspense surrounding the two (the hour and Eric's story). I really like the concept of the Spite House, however I felt it was just creepy and not scary. As a fan of horror, I wanted more time in the house. I wanted to fully experience this scary house that everyone is scared of and runs away from, but unfortunately I didn't quite get that. As for the plot, several were brought up in the story, but they really had no impact or resolution. I also was left confused by the ambiguous ending and so many questions were left unanswered.

All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good haunted house story with a twist. However, if you're a diehard horror fan (like me), then this might not be the scare you're looking for. Needless to say, I would definitely read something else from this author, as this was an impressive debut.

There’s just nothing like a good haunted house story to keep you up reading late into the night, jumping at every little nighttime noise. But there’s more than just a little haunting for the family hired to live with the ghosts of a long-haunted home in The Spite House by Johnny Compton.

Full review published on NightsAndWeekends.com and aired on Shelf Discovery.

A masterful debut. Gothic horror that kept me turning the pages from start to finish. Well written and evenly paced, spine tingling and suspenseful. The action gets going from page 1. A father on the run with his two children, a haunted house story turned on its head. This novel was a good time and I can't wait to see what the author delivers next.

A truly delightful haunted house novel. It takes all the way expected elements of this kind of story and spins them around a bit to make it all something new and novel feeling. Once I got into this book, it was genuinely impossible for me to properly put it down until I finished it!

Eric Ross and his two daughters Dess and Stacey are on the run from people who could cause irreparable harm to their family and now they are quickly running out of money. When Eric happens upon a strange employment advertisement that sounds too good to be true but he calls and sets up an immediate interview. The owner of The Masson house in Degener, Texas is looking for a caretaker (of sorts) to live in the most haunted house in Texas so they can document any and all paranormal activity within the house and when the owner is satisfied the payout will be enough for Eric's family to stop running and settle down since the girls have been emotionally suffering although they never voice their negative thoughts out loud. Apparently the house is so haunted that none of the people who were hired previously lasted more than a few days before they left except for the last couple who were supposed to be paranormal investigators who stayed for a couple of weeks but something horrible happened to them. The wife seemed to lose her mind and had to be hospitalized and the husband didn't fare too much better and they were never able to tell about their experiences so now it's time for Eric to take over this haunted horror known as "The Spite House". Will this be the lifesaving venture that will save Eric's family or will this become the worst mistake of their lives and doom the family forever?

This book had all the makings of a great horror story although it just didn't really work for me. There were many spooky elements which sounded very good but when they came together there were too many pieces of the puzzle missing and I was left with so many questions that were never answered and that was a major disappointment for me. There was wonderful atmospheric and many creepy stories surrounding the house which really had all the makings for a good haunting maybe too many scares promised and not enough frights delivered. There were several multilayered stories in the background which sounded great but they never followed all the way through. I loved the characters of Dess and Stacey but I didn't care for most of the others even the father (Eric). I appreciated how much Eric loved his daughters but I felt he was impulsive and immature and put his children at risk especially with this house. There was a major story about Stacey that was good and very creepy but when I finally found out the backstory there was never any resolution to what, why and how her story came to pass and I felt very let down. Although this book didn't work for me I would still encourage readers to give it a try since I noticed many people really enjoyed this book.

I want to thank the publisher "Macmillan Tor/Forge" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this digital copy and any thoughts or opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone!

I have given this horror book a rating of 2 1/2 QUESTIONABLE PLOT 🌟🌟🌠 STARS!!

Started out quite promising, but didn't quite deliver.

Billed as a haunted house Souther gothic, The Spite House didn't hit either note. Yes, there's a haunted house, but the haunting hardly has a chance to build up the atmosphere before all hell breaks loose. It's a bit too, I don't know, on the nose? I wanted to be spooked and never really got there. There's also not much here in the way of a gothic atmosphere - there's a curse, and it's set in the South, yes, but when I think of Southern gothic I think of creeping dread with languishing heat under a sheen of small-town hospitality and while that's there in theory I didn't feel it.

We're not told the nature of the job Eric takes on because he never bothers to really ask before, y'know, moving his family into a violently haunted house with a history of tormenting its inhabitants. Lazy writing and poor communication are my biggest pet peeves when it comes to storytelling pitfalls, and unfortunately this is it here. If Eric had just bothered to figure out what his responsibility was beyond "keep a journal" we wouldn't be in this mess and we wouldn't have a story, and I think a story built on a lack of communication is weak. We're also not really told the nature of the Houghton family curse except that "it kills people" but Eunice is well into her 80s and, well, she's made it this far, it doesn't make much sense for her to be terrified of the curse since she's had, y'know, a pretty long life.

The whole 'people coming back from the dead' angle is just superfluous and doesn't add anything to the story. It would have been interesting to explore that aspect more in depth, but as it stands it felt unnecessary.

I'd recommend it for hardcore haunted house/horror fans as the writing is good and it's a quick and fairly entertaining read. I just wished the novel was more streamlined and, well, spookier.

This novel is definitely an original one, leaving the reader perpetually unsettled about a) what's happening now and b) what will happen next?! The mystery starts from the get-go, when we meet Eric Ross and his two daughters, Odessa "Dessa" who's 18, and Stacy, who is several years younger, in a run-down motel. They've been on the run for several months now- but from what is not clear. Eric's been taking shady, cash-only jobs as they migrate across the country, keeping as far under the radar as possible. When he finds an advertisement for a high-paying caretaker job for a place called "The Spite House" in Degener, Texas, it looks like the answer to their prayers...but the reality is far beyond what any of them could imagine.

A disturbing novel, exploring the lengths people will go to for those they love. Definitely not for YA or sensitive readers, but an engrossing mystery for adults who enjoy gothic or horror.

Johnny Compton crafts a solid haunted house story for his debut novel, but doesn't flesh out the more unique elements he brings to the table here as much as I would have hoped for.

Eric and his daughters, Dess and Stacy, are on the run. He's taking whatever work he can get, including agreeing to stay inside a haunted house for a billionaire hoping to discover the secrets of the afterlife. Offered an impossibly nice sum of money, Eric has no choice but to agree to move his family into the spite house, an architectural monstrosity built atop a hill overlooking Degener, TX. Deliberately crafted to be an eyesore by a distant relative of ultra-wealthy Eunice whose heart was filled with pure hate, the Masson House was built solely to spite those who live in the town beneath it. Over generations, it's built up quite a legacy -- dead children roam its halls, and those who go inside disappear entirely or leave permanently changed by the experience. But, the money Eunice is offering is just too good to pass up, and it's the sort of life-changing opportunity that could really turn things around for Eric and his girls. He'd be a fool to say no... Right?

The Spite House offers up some tantalizing promises that I wish Compton had more fully explored. Eric has an obsession with ghosts and during a phone interview with Eunice in the book's opening chapter describes his theory that "sometimes the past has sort of an echo that catches up to the present." It's an intriguing concept and once that I wish Compton had developed more fully beyond the typical haunts and scares of this particular horror sub-genre. Maybe I just had my expectations set too high, but once Eric's theory was laid out I was tantalized with promises of temporal anomalies and multi-dimensional gateways. We do get some of that via the dreams cum flashbacks Eric experiences once in the spite house, but it's never quite as intriguing or next-level as I had hoped for.

I was also disappointed that we didn't get a more direct through-line into Eric's experiences within the spite house. Instead, Compton gives us a shorthand look at what Eric is going through by couching it all under the experiences others have had within the spite house. Eunice had previously hired a husband-and-wife ghost-hunting team, but they largely feel extraneous to much of the larger happenings here, despite charging us into the book's climax when one of Eric's daughters is abducted. We get told a lot about what Eric should be experiencing, but we never really see it directly until very late in the book and through some subtle bits of self-reflection.

For as much as the spite house itself is built up to be this grand and frightening monolith of horrors, we never get to see enough of it to really buy into its fabled multi-generational legacy. Compton tells us a lot about its past, and while the Masson house is certainly rich in history, I really wanted to see more of its manipulations and damage wrought in the present. I wanted to see Eric and his daughters dealing with the confounding and inexplicable nature of the spite house, but we never get quite enough to truly satisfy.

The Spite House does have some intriguing angles to it, particularly the mystery of why Eric and his children are on the run. Compton serves up a truly wicked explanation that took me completely by surprise. Unfortunately, it's another element that is never really given a satisfactory explanation. It offers up some neat background but, given that we're ultimately expected to just go along with it, it also comes as a pretty big ask without more information to ground it.

Therein lies my biggest issues with The Spite House. Compton has some really terrific ideas, but they never really come together as fully as they should, nor are they mined deeply enough to exploit their fullest potential. If Compton had explored some of these ideas more attentively, the book would have been stronger for it. That said, I'm certainly curious to see what Compton does for his next book based solely on the promise he shows in this debut and the tantalizing ideas he brought forth here.

Eric Ross and his daughters Dess and Stacy are running from a troubled past. The details about their situation are murky, but their fear is palpable. As much as they need money to survive, they need answers to help them confront the secrets they carry with them; both of these needs lead them to the spite house. To receive generous compensation, they only need to live in the house and report on their paranormal experiences. But the home's eccentric owner, Eunice, is keeping secrets of her own--secrets that endanger everyone connected with the house and its unearthly residents.

I've seen this classified as horror, which feels misleading. Yes, it is creepy, but at no point did it cross into the realm of terrifying. I mostly struggled with the explanation of why the mother is excluded from the story (without spoiling it, it just wasn't believable or justifiable). There were also a few leaps the author asked me to make to connect events I couldn't 100% believe in. Finally, it was difficult for me to understand how Eric suddenly switched to knowingly putting his kids in harm's way on multiple occasions after going to such lengths to keep them safe.

Overall though, an enjoyable mystery/thriller with enough twists and character development to keep me reading. I would recommend this to readers who like ghost stories with a modern bent.

This is a fantastic ghost story by Johnny Compton.

Eric Ross is on the run with his two daughters, Des and Stacy. They have left everything behind, Eric's high paying job, their nice house, and his ex-wife. They live hand to mouth, Eric taking any job that will make a few bucks.
He sees an ad in a local paper asking for someone to stay in a notorious haunted house for a six-plus figure salary.
Thinking it all has to be BS, he applies and gets the job. It barely takes a night for the spirits to make themselves known.

There are some seriously spooking going-ons in this tale.
Compton does an excellent job of not only keeping me interested. but makes me care deeply for Eric Ross and his children.
I want them safe. I want a happy ending. I want it all to be just a crazy old woman's imagination. Well, you know what they say about wishes...

Highly recommended if you are looking for a convincing ghost story with some real spine-chilling moments.
Thanks to @netgalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

I have a weakness for haunted house stories – especially atmospheric Gothic ones. When I was sent the NetGalley widget for this novel, I immediately downloaded it.

Unemployed Eric Ross and his daughters, eighteen-year-old Dess and seven-year-old Stacy, are on the run. For the past year, they’ve lived in cheap hotels and moved around every few days. Eric picks up odd jobs here and there where no one asks any questions. Looking over their shoulder and being paranoid are now habits. Even young Stacy has been trained on an escape plan. When Eric receives an offer to stay in the Masson House, supposedly one of the most haunted places in the state, and keep a record of paranormal activity, he accepts the job. The money is almost too good to be true and will relieve their financial stress. Now he and his family just have to survive.

I didn’t get a strong Gothic vibe from this story, but it sure provides unnerving, atmospheric scenes. Shadows in corners, disembodied voices, possible spirit possessions, creepy ghost children, doors opening and closing on their own – all good things for horror/paranormal fans. Even though Eric is frightened, he puts his family first and is determined to stick it out and earn the small fortune promised if he completes the job. He’s a pretty stubborn guy and very protective of his daughters. Stacy’s ability to see and communicate with some of the spirits will send tingles down your spine.

While reading, I kept wondering what happened to send this family on the run, and when the reason is casually mentioned in a sentence, I immediately halted and said “Wait – what?????” It’s a shocker, folks. I’d also never heard of a spite house, but it’s a building constructed or modified solely to annoy the neighbors. I did a Google search, and there are several across the country.

This is an impressive debut, and an author to watch for horror/paranormal fans. I’m excited to see what Compton does next.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you Netgalley and MacMillan for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

“The Spite House” by Johnny Compton is, set in modern day Texas following Father Erin and his two daughters who are running from their past and move in to the most haunted house in Texas.

I would give “The Spite House” by Johnny Compton a 3- Star review because, 1; I like the idea of this 2; the haunted house and others were greatly described 3; the different povs helped greatly with the story but 4; things just didn’t seem to fit or just left me with questions.