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Book Review: Model Home by Rivers Solomon
When Ezri’s parents die under mysterious circumstances, they return to their Texan childhood home—possibly haunted—in a gated community where their family is the only Black family.
Summary:
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.
As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents’ death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?
Review:
I’ve read most of Rivers Solomon’s books—they’re auto-reads for me at this point. I love their unique perspective and creative twists on speculative fiction. Solomon’s books always challenge me, so even though haunted house stories aren’t my favorite subgenre, I picked it up—and I’m glad I did. This turned out to be a queer psychological thriller that was hard to put down, keeping me up late reading.
The mystery starts early, with Ezri receiving texts from “mom,” but they suspect it’s the “other mother”—the ghost that haunted the family home in a gated community when they were children. It doesn’t take long before Ezri and discovers their parents dead in the backyard in what initially seems like a murder-suicide—but the siblings suspect it’s something far more complicated.
I appreciated how Solomon depicted the family dynamics under stress—three siblings thrown together for an unexpectedly long visit during a family tragedy. It’s the messy, real stuff of love and tension between people who care about each other but don’t always get along perfectly in a pressure cooker situation. The haunting also impacted each sibling differently, not just because of their age but due to the way their parents parented them, shaped by birth order.
I can’t discuss the most shocking part of the book without spoiling the twist. Suffice it to say, it was dark, gritty, and far less supernatural than anything else I’ve read by Solomon. That’s what made it so powerful—it felt so close to being like other psychological thrillers I’ve read but conveyed something profoundly different. It was deeply rooted in the Black experience in America, and it left me almost breathless.
Along with being a story about a Black family, Ezri is nonbinary, and both they and their child have diabetes. I really appreciated how Ezri’s gender identity was never an issue for their family—even when they were a child. This was refreshing and grounded in a sense of acceptance and love.
Please note that this book includes an explicit sex scene that is consensual. It also discusses predation on a minor and child sexual abuse (CSA).
Due to these sensitive topics, this was not a five-star read for me. While the book was beautifully written, I reserve five-star ratings for books I feel personally connected to. Books with such content usually don’t end up in my favorites category. (Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson was a big exception for me.)
Overall, this is a unique take on both the haunted house and psychological thriller genres. It offers a scathingly insightful analysis of being Black in America, while giving voice to a nonbinary sibling. Highly recommended for readers looking for a Black perspective on the haunted American house.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 304 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
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Book Review: The Baker’s Daughter by Sarah McCoy
Summary:
It’s 2007, and Reba is a journalist living in El Paso, Texas, with her fiance, border patrol guard, Riki. She hasn’t been able to bring herself to be fully honest with him about her dark childhood overshadowed by her Vietnam Vet father’s struggle with depression and PTSD. Christmas is coming up, and she is interviewing Elsie, the owner of the local German bakery. Elsie has some intense secrets of her own that show it’s not always easy to know what’s right when your country and family go wrong.
Review:
I have an intense love for WWII stories, and I immediately was drawn to the idea of intergenerational similarities and learning from an older generation innate in this book’s plot. It is a complex tale that McCoy expertly weaves, managing to show how people are the same, yet different, across race, time, and gender.
Reba’s and Elsie’s tales are about two very different kinds of bravery. Reba has a wounded soul that she must be brave enough to reveal to the man she loves. She lives in fear of turning into her father or losing herself entirely in the love for another, the way her mother did. She faces a struggle that I have heard voiced by many in my generation–do I risk myself and my career for love or do I continue on alone? To this end, then, the most memorable parts of Reba’s story, for me, are when Elsie advises her on love in real life, as opposed to the love you see in movies and fairy tales.
I’ve never been fooled by the romantic, grand gestures. Love is all about the little things, the everyday considerations, kindnesses, and pardons. (location 482)
The truth is, everyone has a dark side. If you can see and forgive his dark side and he can see and forgive yours, then you have something. (location 844)
One issue I had with the book, though, is that although we see Elsie’s two relationships before her husband in stark clarity and reality, we never really see what it is that made her ultimately choose her own husband. We see their meeting and first “date,” yes, but that’s kind of it. I felt the book was building up to what ultimately made Elsie choose her American husband and move to Texas, but we only see snippets of this, whereas we see a lot of Elsie’s interactions with her prior two boyfriends. That was a big disappointment to me, because I wanted to know how Elsie knew he was the one, and how she herself was brave enough to take the leap she encourages Reba to make.
I am sure most people will most intensely react to the story of Elsie’s actions to attempt to save a Jewish boy during WWII and may even wish that was the only real story told. Elsie’s life during wartime Germany. It is definitely the stronger of the two stories, but I so enjoyed the lesson in valuing and listening to those older than you that we see through Reba meeting and learning from Elsie that I must say I like the book just the way it is. Is it different? Yes. But that’s part of what makes it stand out in a slew of WWII fiction. Elsie did this brave thing, and her whole life she never knew if it really made much of a difference. She just lived her life, married, had a daughter, was kind to a journalist. In a sense, it makes her story seem more realistic. Less like something from “The Greatest Generation” and more like something possible to accomplish for anyone with a strong will and willingness to make up her own mind.
One critique I have that slowed the book down for me and made it less enjoyable are the insertion of letters between Elsie and her sister, Hazel, who is in the Lebensborn program. Compared to the rest of the book, the letters were slow-moving and only moderately interesting. I can’t help but feel shorter letters would have gotten the same message across without slowing down the story quite so much. Yes, the inclusion of the sister was necessary to the story, but I feel like she got too much stage time, as it were.
I also have to say that I really hate the cover. It reflects none of the spirit or warmth of the book itself. The story is wrapped in warm ovens, scents of cinnamon, and bravery, and yet we get the back of a woman’s head with an inexplicable gingham strip at the bottom? Yeesh.
Overall, this is a life-affirming story that teaches the value of connecting with the older generations and cautions against thoughtless nationalism. I highly recommend it to fans of literary and WWII fiction alike.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: NetGalley
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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