Mormama Hardcover – May 30, 2017

I enjoyed this haunted house novel, and I highly recommend it!

one of the best "haunted" novels I've ever read.

This is a creepy, Southern gothic novel. Having read Kit Reed before, I expected a certain type of novel, and being a Kit Reed novel, I got completely the opposite. This is a fascinating piece of a man how has suffered under the archaic ways of relatives.You delve into the character’s very quickly, with a strange language that is all his own. The puzzle of his ‘why am I here?’ is a slow burn throughout the novel, which is how it should be. The main character, Dell, finds a place to squat, and meets a young boy. The house though has different ideas.This story jumps back and forth adding layers to the story as it unravels. A great, creepy novel that holds no prisoners. I loved it.

A man with no memories. A creepy house. Family secrets. Haunting spirits. All of it set in a crumbling section of the southern city of Jacksonville, Florida. And if this sounds like Southern Gothic to you, then you are absolutely right, because Kit Reed has perfectly set up just that type of haunting story, one which will make you huddle down deeper under the covers and desperately try not to jump at every shadow in your own bedroom.It all starts with Dell. This drifter having no memory of who he is, where he comes from, or even his own name. Dell merely a moniker he picked for himself. But when he gets his clothes from the hospital, he finds an index card with an unfamiliar address upon it, as well as a flash drive.Certain the address will somehow spark his memories Dell shows up at a crumbling mansion in a section of Jacksonville which was once an affluent area, but is now well on its way to oblivion. Sneaking in, Dell is quickly discovered by one of the residents: teenager Theo. This young man making friends with our lost drifter and helping him set up camp in the home.As he quickly gets acclimated to his new home, Dell finds out that a trio of evil Aunts run this household. Ivy, Iris, and Rosemary the matriarchs of the family with Theo and his mother Lane mere temporary visitors, who have taken refuge here after being abandoned by Theo’s father. But no matter the length of their residence, all of these people are caught up in the evil which has befallen generations of their family. The signs pointing to the house (or some evil within it) being the cause!Told through multiple points of view (Dell, Theo, Ivy, and Lane to name the main ones), Mormama is a short book which actually takes a while to fully develop. The narrative spending a great deal of time creating the mood, developing the environment, and introducing characters. This allows Kit Reed to fully flesh out everyone (Each person endowed with their own unique personality, quirks, and desires.), but it certainly slows down the pacing of the narrative and did result in a bit of information repetition. However, for me personally, I felt the negatives of the multiple POVs was more than made up for with the well developed characters, because, as I always say, characters are what make or break a book, and with Mormama I found several to keep me turning the pages.Even with characters I could empathize with and care about, this novel did misstep a bit with the plot itself. The premise of this creepy tale was wonderful, captured my imagination, and made me want to see where it all led, but along the way from beginning to end, the true horrific potential of Mormama never really materialized. Sure, it had its moments, but I was left wishing it had been better. Better resolution of plots. Better ultimate explanations. Better conclusion. None of these things were bad. Rather I just wished they had lived up to their full potential.All in all, Mormama was an entertaining read that did an amazing job capturing the true atmosphere of Southern Gothic, gifted readers with fully developed and compelling characters, and kept the haunting chills coming until the end. No, it didn’t fully realize my lofty expectations, but then again, few books ever do. So I’d encourage others to take a long look this novel by Kit Reed, because it might be exactly the story you need to read.I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. I’d like to thank them for allowing me to receive this review copy and inform everyone that the review you have read is my opinion alone.

Sometimes the past doesn’t like to let go. The Ellis house has been standing for three generations, a rotting shrine to fabulous wealth and festering greed. The house keeps its own, drawing them back when they try to escape. Lane escaped once, until her husband walked out on her and her son. She had to go back to the house that nearly devoured her as a child. Memory less, Dell can only hope that the card in his pocket will take him home to the Ellis house and a family that could be his. Theo, Theo wants out, away from the elderly Aunts who haunt the house like a trio of ghosts, away from his mom being stuck unable to care for either of them, and away from the thing that whispers to him at night. Away from the Mormama who tells him about the house’s tragedies and the darkness that presses in on its residents. Sometimes the past doesn’t like to let go. Sometimes it refuses to.Southern gothic isn’t a genre I’ve done much with before. Based on Kit Reed’s Mormama, it’s not quite horror, and it’s not quite genre literature, but somewhere between the two. There’s a lot of almost character versus atmosphere going on and, more than that, a character versus past thing. I really dug both of those aspects. The downside to how atmospheric and into how trapped the characters feel by their situations is that the book can be very easy to put down.So, what do I mean by that? Part of the atmosphere for the book was this sort of floating hopelessness. It seeped into little corners of the characters lives and pulled them more tightly to the house. Lane wants out as soon as possible, but she can’t find a job to allow that. Dell wants his past back, wants to know where he came from, but he’s so desperate for it to be this one version of him that he can’t accept anything else. He also can’t bring himself to use the one source he has that might tell him everything. Even the Aunts are trapped in their past and the bitterness they have over merely being caretakers of the house rather than the belles they had been in their youth. It’s both something that slows down the book and cuts its readability and also, ultimately, really cool.That’s kind of my feeling on a lot of the book ultimately. It’s a slow read with a lot of bits that don’t feel super important to the story but that absolutely build the characters and atmosphere. Which makes for an interesting read. I do feel like some of the supernatural bits could have been tied in better, but that’s a little thing for the most part. The fairly slow pace over can make the ending feel a little too fast, but that’s not a huge deal, that little too fast can also make it feel cataclysmic. It’s a scale thing I guess. I actually don’t have a ton to say about this one so on to the score I guess?Like I said earlier, southern gothic isn’t a genre that I have a ton of experience with. That’s part of why I don’t have a ton to say about it. There’s also a lot of almost fiddly bits that would probably count as spoilers, so I’m not talking a ton about those. That said, I did quite enjoy this book. While it can get slow at points that works for the overall feel of it. I’m giving Mormama a four out of five and would read Kit Reed again.I was sent a copy of this book by Tor for honest review.