Reviews

Good little spooky book that is just creepy enough for the kids to enjoy. Excellent length for kids who are making the leap from chapter books to novels. Great commentary on change and moving.

mariahistryingtoread's review against another edition

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2.0

I know that books are compared to other books to cultivate hype, but boy did this one shoot itself in the foot. Since it was recommended for fans of Coraline I inevitably could not stop comparing it to Coraline the entire time I was reading.

Coraline is one of my absolute favorite pieces of media of all time. Therefore, I knew going in that I was ridiculously biased and likely to be a bit hard on Finch House. Still, I decided to read anyways because it’s not like Coraline owns the concept and Finch House could, at the very least, provide a good story even if it's not life changing.

The story I received was only okay.

There wasn't really a mystery. Micah didn't have to go searching for clues or putting pieces together to figure out what was going on. Once she made it into the house the story became far less interesting. To compare this to Coraline there isn't a question of Coraline figuring out the mystery of the house. It's simply a spooky happening that is affecting her in the moment that the reader is peeking in on. Coraline doesn't need to know why everything is going on because it's not important to her succeeding in the end.

This book never explains why the house operates the way it does, which is fine, but it does have explicit reasons for why the disappearances have been occurring and what is going on right now. As such, it's rather dull that there aren't any puzzles or riddles or something for Micah to investigate.

The only thing Micah is required to do is make a deal with the house which was super anticlimactic because in spite of the villain telling her she couldn't just get everything she wanted she didn't have to actually give anything up.

Spoiler

It's certainly not ideal to be mind melded to a house. Even so it’s not particularly debilitating either.

She didn't lose anything. Coraline risked herself being stuck in the Other World as the Other Mothers' puppet until it killed her. Micah does not offer up anything remotely close to that. She is given the opportunity to sidestep the villain entirely too by just going to the source which undermined the whole concept of this evil antagonistic force in the first place. No one was above the Other Mother. That's what made her scary.

I think the 'Encanto' part of the blurb is what hurt the book. If it had been a straightforward evil ghost story I think it would have been more fun. Restricted as it was by the villain being a relative meant she couldn't really unleash unbridled chaos onto the narrative if Burch wanted her to be redeemed in the end.

I loved the concept of this story, but I did not feel like it took full advantage of its setting. Like there's a whole house of ghosts from various time periods and Micah talks to 2 for like a page a piece. Why not make up some trials or a competition or something involving these people? Let's see how slang or dress has changed. Use those ghosts to slowly unravel the villains' web of lies rather than resort to her monologuing to Micah. Spike the tension by having the ghosts who get too close to Micah fade away (inexplicably from her perspective).

Coraline doesn't need further exploration because it's so limited in scope. Finch House introduces too much to do so little. I'd have preferred if Finch House was more apathetic and simply ate people because it lacked any kind of morality (since it's y'know a house?) and there were no ghosts trapped at all.

I want to make it clear that even though I mentioned Coraline a lot in this review, I would have felt the same if Coraline wasn't brought into the conversation at all. Coraline is just an easy way to frame my review of the book since a direct parallel was drawn between the two.

On its own, Finch House is a decent book. It’s well written in terms of prose, I enjoyed reading about a Black main character in a genre they do not often get to shine in, and I liked the history sprinkled in as the foundation for the tragic backstory of the villain. Major spoiler related to reveal ->

Spoiler

Finch House was in a white neighborhood at a time when there were hard, violent lines separating Black and white people. It’s heavily implied her body was left there or not returned to her family because of her race. It’s also possible she might have lived if it had been possible for Black people to go to that part of the city.

I wish it was cooked a bit longer, nevertheless, I absolutely would still read another book by Ciera Burch based on what I saw from her here.

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