The universe works in funny ways. The morning before I started reading The Place Where They Buried Your Heart, I was typing up my notes for a Dark Side of the Word episode. And I wrote down, with much regret, that “nothing really scares me anymore” because I’ve read so many horror novels.
That night, I was awake until 2am reading this new supernatural suspense novel from Christina Henry. And I was totally afraid to get out of bed and walk around my very safe, decidedly non-haunted house.
I was afraid of the creaks and groans of my house settling.
And, when my cat jumped on the bed to snuggle, I damn near let out a scream to wake the dead.
IT WAS AWESOME.
What’s The Place Where They Buried Your Heart about?
The Place Where They Buried Your Heart is about a very haunted house in the Chicago suburbs. It’s a house of urban legend where terrible things happened long ago, and the neighborhood kids are dared to go in and out of the house. Most of the time, the kids are fine. They go in, they come out, and no one’s the worse for wear.
But that was because those kids went in when the house was sleeping. In The Place Where They Buried Your Heart, the house wakes up. Three kids go in, but only two come out – and one of them’s missing an arm. He claims it was ripped off by the thing in the walls that ate their friend.
What follows is a compelling, unsettling, and dark tale about the worst house on the block. Henry’s novel is also a story about found family, early 90s nostalgia (which I loved!), and dealing with grief, community, trauma, and motherhood. This horror book tugs at your heart even as it injects icy fear into that same space.
What I loved about The Place Where They Buried Your Heart
The Place Where They Buried Your Heart scared the hell out of me. Not every moment of every single page. But at many, many key moments.
There are creepy little children fingers reaching under closet doors. There are entities calling your name in the voices of people you love and desperately want to find. There’s a force that repels certain people from going near the house while luring others to it like a moth to a flame.
There is a monster in the walls that eats you.
God, it’s so freaking good.
While the story starts out with the neighborhood kids being “eaten” by the house, it’s not just the kids who experience the spooky goings-on. The neighborhood adults are all believers, too. Generations of people believe in the horror that this house holds.
I feel like there’s a growing trend in horror lately, where paranormal events and entities simply exist. I saw it first in Incidents Around the House, and more recently in Man, F*ck This House (and Other Natural Disasters). Horror stories no longer seem to spend time trying to prove or disprove supernatural events. These events are just taken at face value, and the characters accept them as fact. The story is instead figuring out how to deal with them in their lives.
I also “ate up” the 90s and 00s nostalgia in the book, as well as the Melting Pot of this cursed little Chicago neighborhood. There are Italian, Polish, Indian, Hispanic, and other ethnic last names all on the same block, just like where I grew up. All the kids play together all day outside in the summers, and all the parents watch out for all the kids, just like when I was growing up. Even though there’s a lot of terror in the neighborhood, there’s a lot of love, too. It makes you care about all the characters and hope that this awful house doesn’t devour anyone else.
What I didn’t like about The Place Where They Buried Your Heart
The one thing that kept The Place Where They Buried Your Heart from being a five-star read for me on Goodreads? The ending. *sigh*
No spoilers here, don’t worry. I just didn’t like the direction that Henry went toward the very end of the book. It was a little hokey, a little trite. And, I just felt like the ending was too easy after all the horror and hardship throughout the book. The ending didn’t completely ruin the book for me, but it definitely left me feeling disappointed after all that build-up.
Should you read The Place Where They Buried Your Heart?
Horror lovers, and particularly haunted house lovers, The Place Where They Buried Your Heart is your must-read spooky book for this year. Just because spooky season is over doesn’t mean you can’t continue the scares. This novel is perfect for fans of The September House. Christina Henry is now a must-read author for me. Excuse me while I go binge her backlist of books.
What’s the book-inspired recipe?
Check back in for the book-inspired recipe: Easy Beefy Tater Tot Casserole.
Although I received a complimentary advance copy of The Place Where They Buried Your Heart from Kaye Publicity, all opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review or for any other promotion/publicity I’ve done related to this book.
