" Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? "

Now if that is not a typical Southern saying then I don't know what is. Red Rabbit Ghost tells the tale of young Jesse, a college freshman, that comes back home for the summer. Home being Blacknot, NC - more specifically to his aunt Nancy's house. As an infant, Jesse was found laying next to his dead mother, by a river bank. There were some rumors, but her death wasn't deemed suspicious - as some accounts suggested she may have had a drug issue.
While in school, Jesse is starting to receive anonymous text messages insinuating that "they" know something about his mothers death. So, as the troublemaker that young Jesse is, he decides to go home for the summer and figure out what really happened to his ma. Well, the way things tend to be handled in the South .... let me tell you this, folks don't care for someone poking around in the past. Besides Jesse, we also get to meet the homeschooled and rather brilliant Alice, with her weird and off putting parents. But I'll digress, that's for you to find out whilst reading...
The story has some magical elements, there are some overlapping timeliness and even some diary entries. Overall a fun and immersive read that will transport you into its imagery. I live in a small southern town and we had a gator recently in the pond behind the house.. so a lot of the atmosphere and depictions were uncanny and very close to home, literally and figuratively speaking. This is a great summer evening read, that will give you the creeps here and there, in a good way!

Thank you to Jen Julian, Orbit Books and Netgalley for making me fear the gator in the pond all over again.. and for the book of course!

A great nighttime read with a few well placed scare moments. I’ve always had a thing about quiet windows when a shadow suddenly appears, it gives me chills and this book really leans into that fear.

I wasn’t expecting the paranormal twist, but it was a welcome surprise that added depth and suspense. What starts out feeling straightforward gradually unearths creepy small town secrets and unsettling discoveries from the past. Creepy, atmospheric, and just the right amount of disturbing

Red Rabbit Ghost- Jesse is called back to his backwoods hometown, Blacknot, NC, when a mysterious person begins messaging him details about his mothers death when he was a toddler. Thrown back into the toxicity of his past, he digs to find answers about himself, his family, and the person who brought him back here.

There is a good amount of mystery and mayhem in this to keep readers engaged. I enjoyed the characters of Jesse and Alice, the two who you jump back and forth between, even though Jesse is a hard to like protagonist at times with his many (and repeated) flaws. I enjoyed how their stories started and later intertwined. It is otherworldly and atmospheric, witchy and time-warpy.

I feel like I would have liked more horror. It is classified as an Adult Horror on Goodreads, General Fiction Adult on NetGalley, but it definitely felt like more of a YA horror to me. While I enjoyed the diary entries, I wish that they actually culminated into something that effected the story more. I felt that way about a lot of elements in the story, including The Night House. I was waiting for it to all come together at then end in a big way, and some small pieces did satisfactorily, but overall I felt like I was left wanting a bit.
I rated it 3.5/5 rounded up to 4 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for the ARC!

3.75 A great night read with some scare jumps, I have a thing for being scared of quiet windows and then seeing a shadow there starting back. That always makes me feel very, and it's super creepy. I wasn't expecting some elements in this novel that take it into the paranormal realm. I thought it wasn't going to be a discovering past kind of novel, but it has some small-town horrors to unveil as well.

DNF at 68%. It’s bittersweet to write this, as I was genuinely excited to dive into this book. From the opening , I felt immediately drawn into the story. The premise was magnetic, the prose vivid, and the early chapters utterly immersive, I couldn’t wait to keep turning pages.

Unfortunately, around the 30% mark, the pacing began to falter. What started as a tightly wound narrative soon became bogged down by excessive exposition. Scenes that once brimmed with tension began to feel like info dumps, pulling me out of the story rather than deeper into it. I pushed through, hoping for a return to the initial momentum, but by the halfway point, the clutter of details left me disoriented and disconnected.

That said, this isn’t a reflection of poor writing. The author’s style is undeniably captivating-lyrical, evocative, and brimming with moments that made me feel like a participant in the world. While this particular story didn’t resonate with me, I’d gladly explore more of their work in the future. Sometimes a book simply isn’t the right fit, and that’s okay.

Thank you Orbit and Netgalley for this Arc. This Arc was provided in exchange for my honest review

This book is best going into completely blind because the fun is in watching this bizarre town’s secrets unfold. This is a trippy, wild read that I devoured pretty quickly. Jesse returns to his backwoods home town because someone claims to have information about the mysterious death of Jesse’s mother. And, that starts the reader’s trip down a rabbit hole! Highly recommend!

Thanks for the opportunity to read in advance!

This was one with such an interesting premise that unfortunately did not stick the landing. Horror can be a tricky genre. Does it need to scare the reader, the characters, or both? Can a book be horror if neither you the reader nor the characters are scared but there still exists technically horror-coded moments? Who knows. What I do know is I found it to be lacking on the horror front. Really, it felt more like general fiction with magical elements. The magical elements themselves were very interesting, and I loved their inclusion. But horror they were not.

But to focus on the positive side of things, I loved how the weirdness with the Night House wasn't explained. We saw its effects, but there wasn't a moment where we were told how it all works. I greatly appreciated that aspect. I also really liked how the ending was handled. It became more and more chaotic, and there was a moment of realization as to what was happening. It was done very well.

That said, it wasn't all good. Over half the book seemed to be establishing the characters and the setting. And yet I feel like I barely got to know either. There were moments where Jesse, for example, would see things in the shape of the town's river. And it was purported to be this wild, revelatory thing. Yet all I could think was, "Oh. Huh. Cool, I guess?" The characters and setting didn't seem to exist outside the needs of the plot, and that just doesn't work in a book like this. The narration was too cold and distant. And then my more minor quip is that the chapters were so long; surely some of them could've been split even further.

This ultimately was a disappointing book that nevertheless has some very creative moments.