by Christina Henry
Release Date: November 4, 2025
2025 Berkley
Ebook ARC; 320 Pages
ISBN: 978-0593953952
ASIN: B0DW3JKYXM
Audiobook: B0DZPGGLPX
Genre: Fiction / Horror
Source: Review copy from publisher
3 / 5 Stars
Summary
On an otherwise ordinary street in Chicago,
there is a house. An abandoned house where, once upon a time, terrible
things happened.
Jessie Campanelli did what many older sisters do and dared her little brother Paul. But unlike all the other kids who went inside that abandoned house, Paul didn't return. His two friends, Jake and Richie, said that the house ate Paul. Of course adults didn't believe that. They thought someone kidnapped Paul, or otherwise hurt him.
The disappearance of her little brother broke Jessie's family apart in ways that would never be repaired. Jessie grew up, had a child of her own, kept living on the same street where the house that ate her brother sat, crouched and waiting. And darkness seemed to spread out from that house, a darkness that was alive—alive and hungry.
My Thoughts
The Place Where They Buried Your Heart is the latest horror entry by this author, and I will say right from the start that I tend to have a love/hate relationship with this author's books as there are some that I really enjoyed and some that I just couldn't finish so I do enter them with a bit of trepidation. And while I did find this one more enjoyable than the last one I read, I wasn't a fan of the ending, nor did I find the relationships well developed, such as that between Jessie and her mother.
Jessie was a lot more interesting as a teenager than she was as an adult. Whether this was done on purpose is hard to say as the 'haunted' house featured in this story fed on children, not adults, most of the time. But Jessie experienced a lot of trauma as a teenager, first losing her brother to the house (and dealing with the feelings of guilt because of how it came about), then watching her family fall apart in the aftermath. I actually thought one of the most interesting things about the earlier years was Jessie's relationship with her mother and I really wished the author had developed it a bit more as Jessie grew up and had her own child. But we just got pieces of what was happening which I felt lowered the intensity of the feelings, both for Jessie and her mom. I wanted to feel more empathy for both of them, but the way it was written made me feel like a spectator rather than being fully immersed in their emotions. It made it hard to accept why Jessie stuck around as an adult to 'guard' the house as a lot of the emotional impact was on a superficial level rather than really hitting you in the gut.
I did find aspects of the 'haunted house' quite interesting and I wish more time had been spent on developing the horror of the house. Yes, it was 'eating' people and making people disappear, but honestly, the telling aspect of the story got old rather quick. I like to find out things as the main character does, but there was a lot of showing rather than experiencing and I feel like that takes away from the horror of things. Now horror is different for a lot of people and I don't typically get scared from reading horror novels, but I do get horrified, disgusted, emotionally invested, etc... and this one didn't really do that for me. Yes, there were horrific things that were done in the house, but again, I felt like they were done from a distance, and this lessened the impact for me. Which is a shame as there were a lot of interesting elements in this book. And to be fair, I was a lot more interested in the psychological trauma of what happened on the people in the neighbourhood then the actual horror as that was so much more interesting, something I wish the author spent more time developing. I mean, there is nothing more horrific than knowing there is something horrible out there reaching out for your family in ways you don't know, and not knowing how to deal with it. The pace of the book was fine, even if the ending was quite rushed, and I did really enjoy the ambiance.
Verdict
The House Where They Buried Your Heart had more of a psychological nuance to it, something that I did enjoy quite a bit. There were a lot of creative aspects to the story, and I liked how the house had a different effect on different people in the neighbourhood. I did feel like a lot of the psychological trauma was not developed as well as it could have been however, and felt led by the nose a lot of the time rather than letting the reader discover things as they read. And while Jessie's character had some interesting developments, except for maybe Ted, I didn't feel the same way about the secondary characters, and I wish we had seen more psychological development for the relationship between Jessie and her mom. Haunted house books are a dime a dozen and it does take some creativity to make it fresh and interesting, and while there were some things that needed development, I did think the author was creative and do recommend this book for that reason.
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