⭐⭐⭐.5

The cover art design alone truly grabbed the attention of this morbidly curious ghoul 👻

... but the story behind the art... maybe that's the true "horror" element used here in this emotionally written, multi-generational telling of family drama & the connections weaves across time that pull us towards maintaining a family business— in this case, flipping foreclosures.

As a lover of architecture and unsettling stories, this one did indeed checked those boxes, and I really enjoyed the addition of photos and stylistic choices for the chapters, but felt a bit disconnected at times throughout the story with the pacing & jarring perspective switches. Still, I enjoyed the intriguing reading experience!

Very grateful to Astra Publishing House and NetGalley for this advanced read 🖤

This was a really good read and I think it had a decent writing style and story! Would recommend to anyone looking for next read

I really disliked this book. I love Gothic novels but to me this was just a rambling mess. I did not care about any of the characters and if wasn't so short I probably would have not finished the book.

I really tried to enjoy this one but I it was hard to push through. Like someone else mentioned it read like a fever dream. It was hard to keep track and I found myself confused. Also none of the characters were enjoyable at all (the ones I could follow and remember). I also feel like it may be in the wrong genre it isn’t a horror. The cover is great really makes you want to read the book.

A novel that reads a bit like a surreal fever dream, Foreclosure Gothic manages to say lots while documenting the seemingly mundane with a flair for the occasional strange occurrence. In essence, this book is about the inception of a family, a possible legacy, a life.

Man meets woman, man and woman have a child, and man and woman must provide for the child. Ultimately, this ability to provide comes in the form of flipping houses that have been foreclosed, cleaning out the lives of those no longer present to make way for the new life to come.

Foreclosure Gothic is the kind of novel that doesn't feel readily active in your hands but is the kind of story that passively dwells within your mind asking questions of sustenance, longevity, nourishment, generational wealth and capitalism. I won't lie, l'm still not 100% certain on how I feel about this novel, but what I do know is that it made me interrogate the simple act of flipping houses.

The haunting nature of past tenants, the destruction of any evidence of their lives, and the profitability of selling this shell to someone else. It's a novel with a strange liminality that lingers and one that questions the American dream. It's a weird read for sure, but I have to commend its thought- provoking, haunting nature.

Described as an ‘autobiographical gothic tale of Hollywood dreams and upstate New York reality,’ Foreclosure Gothic marks—in my humble opinion—a strong debut for author Harris Lahti.

This is a multi-generational tale that begins with aspiring actor Vic Greener who trades his starry-eyed dreams of Hollywood acclaim for the grit of flipping foreclosed homes on the East Coast. The story follows him, his wife Heather, and eventually, their son Junior, throughout the course of their lives as actors-turned-landlords.

I initially requested this book from NetGalley with the hopes that it would be yet another creepy-kooky read to add to my growing shelf of whacky tales, but Foreclosure Gothic turned out to be so much more. In quick summation, for those looking for a decisive recommendation: this book reads like Death of a Salesman and Rosemary’s Baby’s lovechild.

With taut, yet slow-building disconcertion, and an unyielding suspicion that the protagonist is a victim of his own hubris and inability to listen—a suspicion that is routinely validated throughout the decades—Foreclosure Gothic also reads like a tragic-comedy-of-errors.

The world is bleak, the characters rationalising, rather than rational, and the outcomes of their poor decision-making fantastical, given most of us would be the subjects of a true crime docu-series were the roles reversed.

In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this book for how utterly uncomfortable it made me, and then for how grateful it made me for my brown, Muslim upbringing (my parents would have run out of every situation Vic Greener charged full speed ahead towards).

I could rattle on ad nauseum—full on literary analysis style—regarding all the ways you could appreciate this book, but I think the only sufficient way to truly appreciate it would be in conversation with others who’ve shared the experience of reading this debut wonder.

I really liked this book, and went into it blind. I received it as an ARC on NetGalley (thank you!).

I like the story, the style of writing, the vignettes of the characters, and the ending. It was very well done. I was very engaged all the way through and I didn’t want it to end. I’d read from this author again.

I enjoyed the concept of Foreclosure Gothic and I can appreciate what Lahti was going for. The idea of following this protagonist from house to house, each unsettling in different ways is very fun. It was meant to be unsettling and part of that was through the focus on the mundane aspects of life—unfortunately that focus with ultimately lacklustre payoff meant that this fell flat for me. Very rarely did I feel unsettled or spooked and the way that it jumps forward in time somehow made it drag even more. I think that people who are interested in that mundanity, who want that slow growing feeling of being unsettled will appreciate the art in here, but it ultimately was not for me.

Foreclosure Gothic by Harris Lahti is never a really straightforward story in that there is no real central conflict and denouement. It is described by the publisher as “deeply autobiographical” which I could definitely feel. Rather than massive catastrophes, the characters experience small breaks that never really get set but are managed through makeshift splints with generational repercussions. Lahti’s writing is eerie and unsettling from the get-go, it was difficult to not try and puzzle out what sort of dark turn was going to happen and when. It turned out the whole novel was a series of rooms with dark endings. Some are just skimming the surface like a silent dinner suddenly punctuated by a mostly mute’s son bewildering inquiry, others straight into the depths of human darkness like the discovery of some photos in one of the Greer family’s acquired properties.

For such a brief novel Lahti packs so much into Foreclosure Gothic but it never feels over the top or too sprawling. From the beginning when we meet Vic and Heather, their romance feels similar to Pete and Alice’s in David Lynch’s Lost Highway. It’s just as cinematically sensual here but not as dangerous. There is some commentary throughout about the son’s distaste for his father’s business in flipping houses. Vic (the father) explains it best when he says, “this business capitalizes on destruction and repair.” In Foreclosure Gothic the family gives their lives to the latter and is not spared from the former.

I struggled hard reading this book. The premise was intriguing, but the actual story was lacking for me. I expected this to read more like a horror book but found it read more like general/literary fiction. When the horror and creepiness started amp up, it soon fizzled out fast.

Thank you NetGalley for the early access to this novel.

What a strange little A24 movie of a book.

If you, like me, are a weirdo who enjoys ominous, unsettling horror-adjacent stories, thick with humidity and Picnic At Hanging Rock-style questioning reality, you’ll probably like this, too.

Vic Greener meets Heather as he prepares for a guest role on Days of Our Lives as a sociopathic doctor. Their chemistry is immediate. They fall in love, Heather quickly becomes pregnant, and they move back to the Hudson Valley to be closer to family. As a source of income, Vic finds himself drawn to getting into the house-flipping boom of the late ‘90s and 2000s. What is intended to be a temporary source of income becomes a lifetime career, and a lifetime career begets opportunities to view sinister and strange people as Vic explores foreclosure after foreclosure.

This is a really aptly-titled book: gothic in the sense that on the surface, it is just a biography of a man’s life. The underlying unsettling possibilities and psychologically upsetting moments within are what you choose to make of them. There’s no overt horror here, no jump scares or slashers. Instead, there’s the creeping dread of knowing that something not quite right might be lurking around any corner, influencing your life in ways you might not see coming.

Foreclosure Gothic won’t be for everyone, but its wit and unique subject matter made it a really interesting, satisfyingly spooky early summer read for me. Lahti’s prose is hypnotic, and weaves a viscerally palpable atmosphere where in moments, I swore I could feel the humid sheen of a Hudson Valley summer lingering on my skin.

Thank you so much to Harris Lahti and Astra House for the e-arc.

strange, wild, and interesting. at time the overall buildup never leads to an actual climax, but mostly it works quite well. 4 stars. tysm for the arc.

I struggled to get into this book, The synopsis sounded so interesting and unique, but unfortunately I just couldn’t gel with the overall premise. I kept waiting for something exciting to happen but it never came. I am glad this book is a quick read because I am not I would have finished it. Th protagonist was extremely annoying and self-absorbed. I just didn’t care about him or his home life.

"A multigenerational and deeply autobiographical Gothic tale of Hollywood dreams and upstate New York reality.

Foreclosure Gothic reimagines the American Gothic against the backdrop of today's Hudson Valley. The story tells of ex-Hollywood actor Vic Greener as he falls in love with the elusive Heather Roswell and the couple, following in the footsteps of Vic's father, resolves to make a life restoring one foreclosed home after another. Then comes the uncanny, destabilizing arrival of new tenants in their duplex, and the Greener's shocking discovery upon their departure.

With evocative and unsettling black and white photos throughout, this debut novel is at once a skewed portrait of three generations of Greener men, an intimate look at both childhood and parenthood and an examination of the friction between chasing one's dream and working to make money."

The title alone is so evocative of today's America.

This book was very peculiar. Often times I felt as though there was no narrative structure at all--no plot there to decipher. Then I would be snapped back in with a strange occurrence, or a plot point that would reappear like a ghost of the past. The description leads me to believe that there will be more strange things happening, be it during renovation of house foreclosures or within tenants as their lives run tandem to the main family, however that wasn't exactly the case. It was very atmospheric. The title being Foreclosure Gothic was actually better as a descriptor of the book than the description was.

Taken as a whole, each chapter felt like it's own story in and of itself. The narrative structure was a bit confusing at times, walking me around in a circle more than once and rehashing information and topics I already knew, which made me question if it was the file or the way it was written that felt a bit off. I enjoyed it nonetheless for the offputting feel, the slice of life attitude, and how I questioned if these things really happened, if these people were real, or what was going on.

i haven't read a lot in the gothic genre, but i enjoyed this one! the pace was Intense, but i wish that some of the more classically 'horror' scenes went a little bit further than they did; i think people who don't typically read horror would like this for that reason exactly. vic was absolutely insufferable (to the point where he felt like a real-life Man) and i loved the inclusion of different pictures. thanks astra & netgalley!

Ah, gosh. I wanted to like this one, but I really just couldn't get into it.
I am still really thankful to the publisher, author, and Netgalley -- but this one just wasn't for me.

An interesting, atmospheric, and ambitious novel. The specificity of place and time and house flipping, combined with very compelling and occasionally surreal characters, made the sense of dread develop elegantly through the different vignettes. Loved the inclusion of photos!

Almost a fable about how land, money, and constant American Dream–style home improvement can degrade the self. Thought it was great.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
If you enjoy slow-burn horror with philosophical undercurrents and a touch of the surreal, Foreclosure Gothic is definitely worth the read. Harris Lahti is a new voice in gothic fiction, and I’ll be eagerly awaiting his next work. The atmospheric storytelling in Foreclosure Gothic is outstanding. Lahti paints vivid scenes of decaying houses and empty landscapes in a way that mirrors the emotional decay of the characters. The writing feels hypnotic and poetic. I do think that some readers may find the narrative frustrating, as there are some cases where it feels like horror is introduced and then never really followed up upon, but to be, it just amplified how uneased I felt. Overall, I felt like this was a bold and compelling debut and is perfect for readers who enjoy gothic fiction.

this is such a strange and derailed narrative. I didn’t like it. There’s sections where elements of horror are introduced within the forclosed homes that the Greener patriarch is working on... with a certain build up, I was interested in the suspense that was created, but then it’s snatched away with no explanation. it drove me nuts and made reading this really annoying. This is if blue balls was a book! Plus the main storyline had me snoozing a bit… it let me down! 1.5.