House of Hunger

dnf @ 40%
beginning was super strong + premise was fascinating but rlly lacked the suspense. the whole atmosphere of the house wasn???t strange or creepy like i expected. at times felt like i was reading a teen drama. disappointing tbh.

This is the first book by Alexis Henderson I have read and I found it so engaging I will seek out her other works such as The year of the Witching and Academy for Liars.

House of Hunger is set in a world where the upper class literally feed on the blood of lower-class women they enlist into their service. Its a suprisingly refereshing take, as they are not vampires in the sense of '..the children of the night" but the rich feed on the blood of the young to keep their viltality and health. Our protagonist Marion is a bloodmaid in the House of Hunger, an infamous and ancient clan of vampiric aristocrats. Surrounded by debauchery and hedonism, Marion is quickly swept away by her new mistress, Countess Lisavet. Marion’s blood keeps Lisavet healthy, and Marion is drawn in by Lisavet’s magnetic pull, but soon she realizes that things might not be as they appear. Suddenly, bloodmaids begin to go missing, and questions begin to arise about what exactly happens once a bloodmaid has outlived her term at the House of Hunger.

Whilst I struggled a bit to continue in the middle of the story the resolution was dramatic consistent and satisfying.

3.5 ⭐️ RTC

The atmosphere of this book is the PINNACLE of what I want from a vampire story...which is interesting considering there are no actual vampires. Possibly a spoiler, but nothing in the summary actually says ‘vampire' so I thought I'd just let you know that there are no actual vampires here, just people who drink blood, but it doesn't really take away from the vampire atmosphere so I wasn't disappointed. This story is lush and dark and debauched and the overall feel of it is just so addicting.

The plot definitely had me gripped. I have a fondness for stories where someone is suddenly dropped into a court life that is every it as dangerous as it is depraved and seeing how they deal with it. Marion's ambition to remove herself from poverty by any means necessary is very relatable, and one of the best parts of any story like this is seeing how far someone like that is willing to go.

The only thing that kept me from rating this higher is that I wish a lot of things had more development. The story seemed to go by quite quickly and by the time the climax hit I didn't feel like any of the relationships had enough depth and strength to justify the choices made. This is most likely because of a few timeskips thrown in and I just really don't like when authors use timeskips to develop relationships quickly. It takes the oomph out of it to go from mild to extreme so quickly instead of actually seeing things develop. Overall this story would've benefitted from being a bit longer.

I will say though that this is the PERFECT book to read around autumn/Halloween. Immaculate vibes in that area.

TL;DR

I love the Gothic/Victorian era that this book is set it, love how it's written and really like all the characters in the story. I had a great time reading.

My Scoring System

I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:

X - Main Story: It's not very interesting, I found that the "story" isn't really there, it's just the life of a poor girl turn bloodmaid and how that changed her perspective on things. And her relationship with the new "sisters" and the ruler of the house that she has now.

X - Side Stories (if it applies):

✓ - Characters: I liked every character, really liked the relation between all the sisters and how they got more close to each other.

✓ - Setting/Ambiance: I loved the era and ambiance of this book, the Gothic/Victorian era is my favorite in terms of looks and dresses so I really liked that about this book.

X - Ending: I think the book could have really used an epilogue to let us know what happened after the ending and gives us a bit more of a satisfying conclusion. Not a bad ending but it could have been better.

Extensive Review

Even though the story isn't very interesting I really liked this book, mainly due to how it's well it's written, the conversations between the characters are very natural and I love the Gothic/Victorian era style so that did help my rating. I've read other people's reviews and can agree with them on how the romance didn't work for them because it felt a bit hollow and rushed, I do agree but I still had a good time reading it.

After reading Carmella in February, I decided I needed more sapphic vampire stories in my life. Around that same time, I stumbled upon House of Hunger, which fit the bill pretty well, and thought the premise sounded great.

While House of Hunger is a horror book, nothing about it stood out to me as horror until around 80%. Up until then, it really felt like dark romance. I understood going into the book that there would be romance, and I'm always fine with that, but only romance for well over half the book when it's categorized as horror just isn't for me. I appreciated some of it, but it still felt too long and slow, and then the last 20% was like: whoa here's some horror and it's going down very quickly whooosh now it's over! I honestly think that if it was paced to my liking, I would have enjoyed it much more.

The atmosphere of the House of Hunger was really dark and luxurious and I feel like I know exactly what its smoky parlors full of drunken overindulgent nobles look like. There are a lot of interesting places and scenes I think would lend themselves perfectly to a movie. I think I'd really enjoy a film based on the book. 

If you're someone who likes romance (with a little spice), and is into mysterious gothic vibes, you might really like House of Hunger!

“To love is to devour.”

I wish I could put into words how much I adored this book. It hit on so many things I adore in horror: love and obsession, vampirism, and plenty of tragedy to go around. Alexis Henderson's descriptions are so vividly brutal, and it makes for a beautiful novel with some really fascinating characters (Lisavet, in particular. I'd read a whole book just about her, if I'm being honest). It's reminiscent of Carmilla when it comes to style and storytelling, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who loves that story.

This book wasn't what I thought it would be. I enjoyed the story and the characters, and assumed it was going to be some sort of love story, or a haunted house situation. Maybe What Moved the Dead has inaccurately shifted my expectations. 

I really enjoyed Miriam as a character and her development what great to read even before she came to the house of hunger. I am really glad they started the story there. At first, the background of her family and life didn't really make sense to me, but it added beautifully to the story later on. 

I did hope there would be some more explanation of what exactly happened and how this all came to be. Everything was explained, but it feels nonetheless like there should be more. Making the bad guy show no indication and then suddenly be completely evil, seemingly without reason, is very frustrating storytelling. I just wish there was more lore and something more complicated going on. It made the last couple of chapters slightly disappointing. 

The pacing at first almost killed me. It was too slow. It got better, but I was bored with it at first.
However, the creepiness was there and it had its gory moments too. The gothic vibes were excellent, and after a certain point, I was intrigued by what was going on.
I liked it, but I don't think it'll stay with me for long.
The world-building wasn't the best, probably because we spent most of the time inside the House of Hunger, but even so, it could've had a little more depth.
I was debating between 2.5 to 3 stars, but CAWPILE pushed it to a 3 star.

Did this book have no editors? What a writing chaos.

This book absolutely shines with promise, but its parts are greater than their sum. I genuinely loved large portions of this book, but they often felt stitched together and oddly out of place. The prose quality would go from sublime to sub-par between chapters. Plot developments were shocking and intriguing, but also frequently rushed and jolting. The characters are likeable and memorable, but often their most memorable moments are rushed, without enough foreshadowing or internal characterization to justify a change of heart. The novel expects us to know the tropes inherent in the genre and expect them in kind; it often fails to put in the elbow grease to explain, for example, sudden changes of heart beyond the fact that this is the part in the gothic novel where the heroine changes her heart.

None of this makes the book not worth reading. In fact, I recommend it! I'll be keeping an eye out for this author in the future. House of Hunger is a wonderful, energetic gothic horror novel with sparkling prose, an excellent plot, and tons of memorable moments. The incredibly lush descriptions, the world the characters inhabit, all of it easily makes a story and world you could get lost in. It just needs a little more polish before it can be truly great.

Also, to those reviews saying the twists were ‘obvious', I strongly disagree.

2.5 rounded down
I just did not vibe with this y'all....
The descriptions were lush and beautifully written but it took up a great majority of the book. I can tell you the exact arrangement of Lisavet's room but I couldn't tell you her depth as a character. Also the ‘romance' was not it for me because it moved way too fast and Marion switched up so quickly. Also, she was just a really selfish character and the whole ‘chosen one' trope was not it for me. I just thought that something was missing (maybe some plot and character development) but I read till the end to see if it got better, but sadly, I was disappointed.

You know those books where you don't have the highest of expectations but you want your reading experience to go a certain way so you come out at least liking the book? That was me with House of Hunger. I knew going in I wasn't expecting it to be my new favourite of the year or anything, but I still had some expectations for it. Luckily this hasn't stopped me from wanting to read Henderson's other book, The Year of the Reaper (whenever I get to that). Either I like/love it or I know not to read Henderson's future books.

I should've marked this a Did-Not-Finish rather than slogging through the book and disliking it all the way through. I originally rated it 3 stars but then after thinking about and it's now a 1 star for me. Which also proves to me I should've stopped reading early on or when I first started realising it wasn't going my way – which there were so many parts where I had the urge to stop reading it. But I didn't and that was a bit of a mistake – whoops.

Both covers were just absolutely stunning. I had the review copy with the UK cover but the US cover is also amazing. The cover (both of them) were definitely why I wanted to read it. Unfortunately the cover did not make up for everything else. Which is sad because they're both so gorgeous!

I sort of liked Marion as a character. I started off interested in her journey and then she met Lisavet and everything immediately went down for me (whoopsie!). I would've rated higher if the plot just matched the characters? I don't know if this makes sense but to me Marion was written (a bit) better than the plot. And I only mention her because I disliked all the other characters so much that even though I didn't like much of anything, Marion was basically my favourite by default because she was the best... of sort of the worst.

I don't like books that only start picking up – pace or plot – right at the end. For House of Hunger, to me at least, the “real” action I think was only after the 80% percent. Which is not what I want in a book at all – especially when it's a book that I'm disliking all the way through.

I can't even bring myself to say like one nice thing about Lisavet and the representation surrounding her because I disliked her so so much. Obviously that's how the character is meant to be written but I was reading reviews and others were raving about how much they loved the characters and the represention was good. Because you had me sitting and thinking “good representation? WHERE”. Did these readers purchase a special edition of this book where Lisavet was interesting? I didn't find her compelling or interesting or likeable in the slightest.

I know that because this is a Gothic novel certain traits of the genre are expected from it. Specifically a slower pace – which means I should have expected this. But this isn't always the case with other Gothic novels so maybe it was me, maybe it was just this book – like I say a lot – you can't always win with every book.

This was such a great read.

I really enjoyed this.

I was reluctant to read because Year of the Witching was just not for me. But this... This was exactly what I wanted the story to be and more.

Highly recommend.

The story follows Marion, a young girl from the slums trying to make a life for herself. She gets chosen as a bloodmaid for a Countess. The story then goes into her relationships with the other bloodmaids, the Countess, herself...

Marion is a strong character.

Note: A Lot of the reviews say this is about vampires. It isn't. It's still great.

read for stabathon 2022: tara carpenterread for blackoween 2022: a book with queer rep

i love love love the year of the witching and sadly this book disappointed me. i adored and vibes and atmosphere and writing but that's where my love for this book stops. there isn't much plot in this book which is completely okay and something i often enjoy IF the characterization is good. i don't need to like the characters in a character driven novel but i need them to be fleshed out and well rounded. the characters in this were flat, some barely existed, and often times the actions and the characterization didn't match up. i also didn't enjoy how the world building was done in this world overall. this is definitely one of my most disappointing books of the year 

4.5 Rounded to 5

Wow. This wasn't at all what I expected! It's dark, atmospheric...dark