Scary Summer Reads: The September House

Some books make you question the kooky characters and from page one, I wondered what was wrong with Margaret. The September House is one of those rare horror novels that feels lived in, worn down like an old Victorian with secrets in its bones and a voice in its rot. Carissa Orlando’s debut is a haunted house story with the soul of a psychological thriller, wrapped in trauma, denial, and an unflinching look at how far people will go to not see the horror in front of them.

Meet Margaret, a perfectly ordinary woman who just wants to enjoy her haunted dream home—even if the walls drip blood every September and the spectral residents are starting to act up. When her husband disappears, and her daughter comes calling, the carefully balanced madness starts to unravel. What follows is a slow-burning descent into the kind of domestic horror Shirley Jackson would raise a brow at and applaud.

Orlando isn’t just writing a ghost story. She’s performing a seance on the trauma women carry in silence, especially the older, forgotten ones. Margaret is the kind of character horror rarely gives the spotlight to: middle-aged, complex, emotionally fractured but fiercely functional. And her refusal to leave the haunted house? That’s not stupidity. It’s survival. She knows the ghosts. She’s lived with worse.

The story is occasionally laced with grotesque imagery, surprising for its often comical absurbdity, but the true terror lies in Margaret’s fierce grip on denial. The supernatural horrors are wild and chaotic, but Margaret’s personal haunting, especially around the subject of domestic abuse, is what roots the story in something far more unsettling than jump scares.

There’s also sharp cultural commentary simmering under the floorboards. The September House echoes the themes of gothic classics while giving them a fresh feminist reckoning. If The Haunting of Hill House explored madness, The September House explores what happens when madness is normalized, and even, in some twisted way, preferred.

This one’s for the horror fans who like their scares intelligent, their ghosts unruly, and their protagonists spattered in blood but still sipping tea. It had me chuckling outloud which is rare. It’s also the kind of horror that doesn’t let you look away, not from the demons, and definitely not from the truths they whisper. The September House is a bold, bloody debut that reminds us some of the most terrifying places aren’t haunted by the dead – they’re haunted by what we tolerate in silence. A must-read for horror lovers who want substance with their scares.