Glad that I read this one! I am currently reading horror genre and Model Home gives me new experience that I didn't expect before.

4.5 rounded to 5

Model Home by Rivers Solomon is an experience that left me gutted, shaken, and questioning the true horror lurking within its pages. I need to go back and re-read those last three chapters because WHAT?!?

This isn’t a book I’d describe with “enjoyment” in the usual sense. Model Home is heavy, weighted with grief, trauma, racism, and family secrets, and it challenges any expectations a reader might bring. The emotional toll is intense, and Solomon’s raw storytelling doesn't allow for a conventional reading experience.

The story centers on three siblings—Ezri, Emmanuelle, and Eve—whose lives are shattered after a devastating tragedy takes their parents. Ezri, who fled to another country to escape her past, is forced to return and confront the painful memories she left behind almost two decades prior. While her sisters remained in Texas, close to the ghosts of their childhood, Ezri tried to escape. But the trauma they share proves impossible to outrun. This isn’t merely a haunted house story; it’s a haunting exploration of grief, secrets, and generational pain.

Solomon has a way of immersing you in their characters’ lives so viscerally that, at times, I felt as though I was Ezri. In those moments, their pain was mine, their fear was mine. I saw pieces of myself reflected back, and it was both unsettling and compelling. Solomon’s prose draws you in and eats you alive, making you live the story rather than just read it.

One of the most captivating elements is Solomon’s exploration of the body. Themes of disability and bodily dissociation are woven throughout, creating an intense sense of claustrophobia. The way they describe breath, physicality, and the neediness of human bodies brings the text to life in visceral detail.

Solomon’s writing is nuanced and precise, blending family drama with psychological horror. The sibling dynamics are complex, each character painfully unreliable, their recollections and perspectives twisted by suffering. Though the story initially seems to explore reconnection and identity, it quickly turns darker, touching on assault, abandonment, and the brutal weight of being Black women burdened by trauma passed down through generations.

The themes Solomon engages with—expectations of Black mothers, the enduring effects of abuse, and generational trauma—are handled with astonishing insight. Solomon captures the liberation and ache embedded in these lives, showing that while it may not be the horror readers expect, familial trauma can be horrific in its own right.

Model Home is both a testament and tribute to River Solomon's poetic and visionary voice.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of Model Home.

Rivers Solomon delivers on a subversive haunted house story that left me thinking about it hours after I finished the book. As with all of their books, Solomon's true prowess is shown through their use of prose. Their use of disorienting language via POV shifts, timeline jumping, and an unreliable narrator all contributed to the overall sense of dread I felt as I read. This was the perfect thing to round out my month of spooky October reading.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review!

This is my first Rivers Solomon book, and I now absolutely understand the hype around their work. While I anticipated a "haunted house" horror story, this novel was ultimately so much more than that. Yes, there were certainly elements of horror and suspense, and a scary-AF house, and I was genuinely afraid for Ezri the entire time. But the book's strengths lie in the character development, the narrative voice, the relationships between family members, and the development and reveal of the thing that has been haunting them all along. To truly enjoy this book, I think it is best to go in knowing as little as possible, so I will leave my review at that. Thank you so much to NetGalley for my advanced copy. I'm looking forward to reading more of Solomon's writing in the future.

Nearly impossible to read. The style just didn’t work to keep my interest I guess. Maybe others think it worked well. The premise sounded interesting but I just struggled to read this.

I loved this book so much. I was expected a haunted house story but this was so much more than that. This is for those who have mommy issues and lots of trauma. I highly recommend this one.

Thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3 stars!

Lyrical. Haunting. Full of childhood trauma. Sibling love.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

there is such darkness in this book, i found it rather tough to get through solely based on the content- the deep sense of loathing, grappling with mental illness, the way trauma haunts this whole book. the mommy issues!! this does explore many complex themes and I think the end does a good job of wrapping things up in a satisfying way. others will likely enjoy this book, there's moments of powerful and hypnotic writing.

"The comfort of a particular history, no matter how horrid it might be. Its ours. A magic only we can weave."

MODEL HOME by @rivers.solomon is not your normal haunted house story so be ready to be taken through a not-so-fun-house of unexpected horrors. Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publishers @mcdbooks and @macmillan.audio for the e-ARC and audio-ARC.

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After the death of their parents, Ezri and their two sisters go back to the home they grew up in to sort out their family affairs but they are greeted with more questions and an outpouring of childhood memories and trauma. A mostly wealthy white neighborhood, the family moved in when the kids were young and their mother was desperate to be the most perfect family on the block going so far as you telling them to be slivers meaning quiet, well-behaved and barely seen or heard. Very soon after the family moved in dark, scary things started happening in the house that the siblings have all but tried to bury in their memories.

Overwhelmed by the reasons they originally moved to England with their daughter Elijah in tow, Ezri begins unpacking more than they originally bargained for.

🏠🏠🏠

Bedazzlingly spooky and deeply layered with an undertone of anxiety, this dual-timeline story weaves a tense family entanglement built on suffering in silence and the dangerous facade of perfection or in this case, "black Excellence." A whole new level of exposing the family's dirty laundry is a major theme and the discussion about the siblings remembering events differently was one that really hit home as I have often found the same with my siblings - "Jarring. The different versions of events we all have."

There are so many trigger warnings here including childhood sexual and emotional trauma, deeply seeded racism, wild parental expectations and being "othered." There is a lot going on here and I would not be surprised if I pick this one up again for a reread someday as it is so compelling but I suspect I did not catch all the intricate layers. This one was definitely hard to read but well worth the effort.

This was my first Rivers Solomon book and it shan’t be my last! I loved their writing—the style, the subject matter, the character development, and on and on. I was very much invested in these characters and storylines. I do think it’s marketed too heavily toward horror and it’s honestly more mystery/lit fic. The scares are few and though my tolerance is high, I don’t know if this is going to give many people a fright. However, the cover design is incredible because of the fact that it’s marketed as horror, and for that reason I suppose I must be thankful. I would very much recommend this book to people, I just wouldn’t expect to be chilled to the bone!

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for providing an arc, and to Macmillan Audio for providing an advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.
Model Home releases October 1, 2024

“This house lures in animals with a death wish.”

Model Home was such a disjointed read, and I’m unsure if that was due to the main character having a dissociative disorder, or if it was just the writing style in general.

I struggled with the inconsistencies of quotation mark placement and only choosing to use them for dialogue half of the time.
I found that the audiobook did a poor job reflecting that Ezri and Elijah moved from England to America as there were no distinct British accents.

If you’re looking for a traditional haunted house story, this isn’t it. However, if you like when a book’s horror is defined by racism and trauma (similar to The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson), with a focus on family drama told through the lens of a gender-fluid main character, then this might be for you.

Such a great take on a haunted house book. I love the way Rivers Solomon writes. It is always such a beautiful experience even when the material/topic is decidedly not. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC copy of the book!

This is a challengingly dark read. But ultimately it ends with cautious optimism. A book that flips the haunted house genre on its head. Sometimes humanity really is the worst.

Model Home feels reminiscent of Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, in that it has a similar and particular focus on the dynamics of the dysfunctional family at the heart of the story— both the family as a whole, and the members individually. The family in Model Home, however, is Black, and their experience as a Black family in a white, ‘affluent’ neighborhood plays a pivotal role in the narrative. Obviously, not an experience that I can resonate with on a personal level, but its exploration throughout the novel amounts to a narrative that is haunting and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Model Home is far more ‘standard’ fiction-forward in genre than speculative (or horror, as I might have assumed before reading this novel), unlike the two other titles I’ve read by Rivers Solomon— The Deep, and An Unkindness of Ghosts— but their authorial ‘voice’ is so distinct that it does seem like a natural extension of the narratives they typically explore.

Ezri returns to their childhood home where they and their siblings grew up as the only black family in a white suburb to find her parents dead in an apparent murder suicide. Ezri and their siblings are forced to confront their pasts and their presents to determine what really haunted that house their entire childhoods.

As with many of Solomon's reads this dealt with a lot of difficult topics including racism and child abuse. It was a good book, but a hard read. I felt that it was more of a thriller than a horror novel.

A haunted house story unlike any other. Ezri moved all the way to England to escape the house they grew up in. But now something is wrong. All three Maxwell siblings will have to return to the house that still haunts them in order to move on. But is the house really haunted--or is something else going on?

Go ahead and plaster every trigger warning imaginable on this one, because true to Rivers Solomon form, it gets dark. The exploration of trauma and sibling relationships was expertly done, and the twist at the end took me truly and horrifyingly by surprise.

Anyone should read Rivers Solomon's work if not for their writing alone. The prose, like in all their works, is simply beautiful.

I was immediately on board when I heard fae was going to publish faer own spin on the haunted house. They use this to explore themes of mental illness, trauma, complex familial relationships, racism and queerness in an outstanding way.

In the end though I don't know how to feel about the ending, I didn't expect an explanation for all that happened in the house - but knowing what I know now, I would love to reread this in the future, catch all the intricacies in this beautiful work.

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read "Model Home" before it's publication date, even though my feedback is coming after it has been released.

I am a huge Rivers Solomon fan. "Sorrowland" is one of my top 3 favorite books of all time, and I was ecstatic to learn that they were coming out with another release that dealt with the supernatural. I honestly haven't really been able to compile my thoughts completely on this novel yet and think it will take another close reading of the book in its final, published form (which I have already ordered) to fully comprehend everything that went into this narrative. I was a huge fan of the sibling dynamic in this novel and how the characters intertwined with one another and their own personal struggles, even though we were hearing the story through Ezri's narration. I am not usually a fan of vague suspense, which is what I feel like this book is truly based around, but I was hooked on it due to the compelling discussions of personal growth, trauma responses, and interpersonal relations. I did not like Ezri much as a narrator or a character, but their perspective was interesting nonetheless. I felt as if their issues with their mother were never made clear to me, and although mother-child relationships are messy, Ezri's perspective of things felt too unreliable for me to believe. Along that same vein, I felt like the last chunk of the book moved very quickly with a lot of pieces that were not fleshed out in a particularly well-done manner and therefore made them seem half-baked. Elijah's possible assault, Emmanuelle's burst to national news, and the final reveal all felt very rushed to me and therefore less surprising than they should have been. I think perhaps I missed something when reading it the first time, hence why I am being more harsh about it than I want to be, and therefore want to re-read it with a new perspective.

There were also a handful of obvious grammatical mistakes in the ARC I recieved, but I assume those have been fixed prior to publication.

Rivers Solomon’s new novel Model Home feels like a horror novel. And in many ways it is. But the horrors that it reveals hit closer to home than readers are likely to expect. As with her previous novels, Solomon uses some genre conventions to explore the experience of Black communities in America. And she does not hold back.
The central character of Model Home is Ezri, who ran away from the family home in Texas, moved to England and converted to Judaism. But the murder suicide of her parents in that family home brings her and her daughter Elijah back to Texas and Ezri’s sisters Eve and Emmanuel. The three are forced to confront the terrors of their childhood – where they were the only Black family in an otherwise all-white housing estate. But worse than that, they believed that their house was (and still is) haunted and that Ezri was in some way possessed. The truth, when they finally uncover it is much, much worse.
On their website, Solomon describes themselves as fae - “half woman, half boy, part beast” and the same could be said about her protagonist Ezri. Gender fluid, conflicted, sometimes feral, fiercely loyal to her family but at the same time combative towards them, Ezri is a somewhat unreliable guide to this world. They believe intensely in the supernatural narrative that has built up around her life but also constantly needs to question its validity. But recognises the damage that was done to her as a child and tries (not always successfully) not to pass that trauma on to their daughter.
Much like the cinematic work of Jordan Peale, Solomon effectively uses well understood tropes in Model Home to explore the Black experience in America. To reveal the hypocrisy and racism inherent in the community and the petty justifications that people make for their discriminatory behaviour. Both of these auteurs work in horror but only in so far as it reveals the true horror of modern society.

Thank you Netgalley for the e-arc of this book!
Rivers Solomon is a name I have come across but never actually explored. This book seemed just the place to start. On the surface, this is a haunted house story, so, I expected to be creeped out and even moved. Some haunted house stories have the potential to do that. However, this book was a haunted house story more about the people rather than the haunting.