A review by sproutedpages
Model Home by Rivers Solomon

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

“How cruel that our parents, unexorcisable, go on inside of us. How cruel that we cannot dis-imbricate their ghosts from our being.”

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.

Thank you so much to Rivers Solomon, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for providing me with an uncorrected digital galley of this novel! All opinions within this review are voluntarily given and entirely my own.
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